Thailand’s Youtuber, Natthamon Khongchak, known to her followers as 'Nutty', has defrauded more than 6,000 people with a foreign exchange trading scam for around $55 million.
According to the local media, she used her online popularity to lure potential victims by offering hefty returns for their investments. Claiming to be a successful forex trader and financial coach, she promised investors 25 percent in returns for three months contracts, 30 percent for six months, and 35 percent for a year.
These interest rates are excessively high compared to legitimate conventional investment opportunities available to retail investors.
A Popular Social Media Personality
Nutty rose to online popularity with her dancing videos. She has more than 847,000 subscribers to a YouTube channel and another 310,000 followers on her Instagram account, but she has not posted any videos for months. In addition, she promoted private courses to forex traders on her social media channels.
Before vanishing from the social media platforms, she announced on her Instagram account in May that she owed 1 billion baht ($27.5 million) to investors. On top of that, she claimed that her broker has blocked her trading account and funds since March. However, she promised to make attempts to recover the money.
“I'm sorry that I have troubled and disappointed many people,” she said in that video. “I want to apologize for this incident from the bottom of my heart.”
The forex scam pulled by Nutty surfaced when her victims started to come out by filing complaints with the authorities. The cybercrime unit of Thailand’s police received complaints from 102 victims claiming to have lost 30 million baht in total, with new victims coming every day.
Moreover, the Thai police issued an arrest warrant against Nutty last week under the charges of fraud, but her whereabouts are now unknown. She is suspected to have fled Thailand, but Wattana Ketumpai, a police officer at the Cyber Crime Investigation Bureau, revealed that Thai immigration records show she is still in the country.
