A woman has been detained on suspicion of being involved in a call centre gang's use of a stolen ID card to open bank accounts, said a police source.
The woman was approached at her home in the Taling Chan area of Bangkok for questioning late on Saturday night and was identified only as Pawina, 30. Police suspect she used the ID card of Nicha Kiartthanapaiboon, 24, to open bank accounts for the gang.
Ms Nicha, who insists she is an innocent victim, spent three days behind bars after being detained and denied bail by police in Tak province, even though she had reported herself to the Crime Suppression Division (CSD).
According to the source, Ms Pawina admitted using Ms Nicha's ID card to open five bank accounts for the gang. She complained of being paid only 4,000 baht of the 10,000 baht that she had been promised.
She claimmed that the person who hired her was a foreigner identified only as Simon.
Meanwhile, a source said police have detained an African man, known as Simon, who used an ATM to withdraw money from the accounts opened by Ms Pawina.
Pol Col Krisana Pattanacharoen, deputy spokesman for the Royal Thai Police, confirmed that Ms Pawina is in police custody. However, she is not being treated as a suspect yet, as the police do not have sufficient evidence to request an arrest warrant.
Ms Nicha said she appreciates that progress being made in the investigation and believes the truth of her innocence will soon become clear. In response to reports that she had contacted a group of suspects by phone recently, she said this was a misunderstanding stemming from the fact that her stolen ID card was also used to register four new mobile phone numbers in Bang Yai.
As for reports she had repeatedly applied for new ID cards, she said he had done so three times, once in 2014 and twice last year, adding that she hadn't filed a complaint over the lost ID cards.
And in response to doubts over more than 6 million baht of money circulating in her real bank accounts, she said it belonged to her family and had been kept in her accounts since she was 18 years old.
