Scam calls can target anyone, even the prime minister of Thailand.
Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra said this week that she had received a scam call from someone impersonating another world leader, whom she did not identify.
“I could hear clearly from the voice that it was the voice of the country leader,” she said Wednesday, adding that the caller may have used AI to fake the other leader’s voice.
It began with a voice message from the person asking how Paetongtarn was doing and saying they were looking forward to working together. She texted back that she was OK and the other person said they would get in touch.
The person later tried to call, “but fortunately it was 11 p.m. and I fell asleep and did not pick up the call,” said Paetongtarn, 38, who became the country’s youngest prime minister in August and is the daughter of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
She saw the missed call in the morning and texted back to arrange a call. Then she got another voice message asking for a donation, saying Thailand was the only member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, that had not donated.
When she received another text instructing her to transfer money to a foreign bank account, “I knew this was not real,” Paetongtarn said.
She did not say when she received the messages.
Southeast Asia has become a hub for telecom and other online fraud, especially in the border towns connecting Thailand, Laos and Myanmar, the latter of which is mired in a civil war. Hundreds of thousands of people have been trafficked into online criminal operations across the region, according to the United Nations.
Most of the people being trafficked are from Southeast Asia as well as South Asia, mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, though some come from as far away as Africa and Latin America.
Credit: NBC News
