I can't understand the mindset of a person that comes to Thailand's red-light areas, which are well-known all around the world, and somehow believes that some woman or girl that they meet there actually likes them and wants to be with them. This isn't to say that ALL of those girls are scammers but there are a ton of stories out there about the people in this line of work that work over men from all over the world for tons of money and all the while they are only pretending to be at all interested in them.
In a recent story where everyone's real identity has been concealed from the press and anyone else, a South Korean man was involved in a fake relationship with a Thai woman that he met in a red-light district bar in Pattaya, and over the course of 4 years the girls scammed him out of an estimated 10 million Baht (around 300,000 USD) and even faked her own death and had doctors involved in the scam with her.
The story goes like this and trust me, this isn't even all that unique.
- "Danny" meet bar girl in Pattaya, an extremely well-known prostitute city
- Bar girl is significantly younger than Danny and expressed her disdain of working in the bar girl life
- "Danny" takes sympathy and after a week of presumably paying for her company, offers to get her out of that life and will pay for her monthly expenses to not have that job anymore
- For years they talk on the phone and "Danny" regularly visits her. During that time she gets him to invest in a coffee shop for her
- As the years pass by she continually needs money for various things including a car accident, her father's death, and a cancer diagnosis that was confirmed on camera by a real doctor
- 4 years later "Danny" is contacted by the bargirl's sister telling her that his girlfriend has died and has already been creamated
- "Danny" goes to visit and said sister claims her deceased family member had a 5 million Baht life-insurance policy, but in order to claim it "Danny" needs to provide them with 500,000 THB and afterwards they will split the balance.
- "Danny" becomes suspicious (finally) and starts asking around about his girlfriend and finds out she is not actually dead
- His girlfriend's entire family delete and blocks him on all messengers and changes their phone numbers
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Now while not all bargirls are like this, I have heard countless stories like this where some hapless romantic thinks that they are going to be a white knight for these girls and help them out of a life on the wild side. I have known some bar girls through the years because when I meet them I am up front with them about how I am not a potential customer for sex work and if they want to just be "real" with me, we can do that. I never try to date them.
The internet is just filled with stories about people being taken to the cleaners by bar girls yet it seems there are so many fools that come here and expect it is going to be different for them. In one particularly gruesome incident, a bar girl and her family strung along a guy for years and then one day while visiting to invest in a house for the two of them, or so he thought, the girl's family killed the guy than later burned him and even ate some of him. They all went to jail for a long time, thankfully.
But in "Danny"s situation, I just can understand a person that has access to the internet that would still be falling for this sort of thing. It is kind of like believing that multi-level-marketing will make everyone rich that gets involved in it even though nobody ever really does. I know a lot of people in Thailand and many of them have been scammed by bargirls in this way although they were never eaten or had $300,000 taken from them.
It is just amazing to me that in this day and age of information that someone actually falls for this still. Here is just a word of advice to anyone that visits the red light districts in Thailand. Just like in USA in relation to strip clubs and Hooters, the girls there don't like you, they are just doing their jobs.
Danny is yet to file an official police complaint in Thailand, which suggests to me that he is still hanging onto hope that his "girlfriend" is going to change her mind. He's a damn fool if this is his thinking. Oh and by the way... the coffeeshop that "Danny" bought for his "girlfriend," she never really owned it but her and the real owners pretended that was the case when he would visit. This scam involved a ton of people.