Idol-Turned-YouTuber Arrested For Fraud After Failing To Sing The National Anthem
A Thai woman who had been active as a girl group member in South Korea has been arrested after committing fraud and evading capture for two years.
According to the South China Morning Post, the 31-year-old Natthamon Khongchak, known by her stage name “Nutty,” and her mother were deported to Thailand on October 25, 2024.
The mother-daughter scammer duo is reported to have attempted to pass as Indonesian locals, but when Khongchak could not sing the national anthem in front of the authorities, their identities were revealed.
In 2015, Khongchak debuted and had a brief K-Pop idol career under the label Dream Cinema. After that, Khongchak turned to YouTube, where she garnered over 800K followers. Posting K-Pop content like BTS and BLACKPINK covers, Khongchak went viral.
With her successful idol-to-YouTuber transformation, Khongchak rebranded herself as a successful investor and forex trader. At one point, on a Thai TV show, she and her mother claimed their family was wealthy, boasting about owning 14 cars and employing 22 nannies.
Khongchak scammed her victims in 2022, with a forex investment scheme that promised high returns. Her victims were promised “25 per cent in three months, 30 per cent in six months, and 35 per cent in a year, all disbursed monthly.”
By July 2022, after the victims began protesting for not getting the promised returns, Khongchak and her mother vanished—reported to have entered Malaysia through southern Thailand before illegally crossing into Indonesia by sea. Before the national anthem blew her cover, Khongchak managed to evade 13 warrants issued by the Thai Cybercrime Investigation Bureau.
According to reports, the Thai police has confiscated assets worth approximately ₩646 million KRW (about $468,000 USD) from the YouTuber and are tracing the flow of funds to recover additional assets.
Khongchak is said to be facing up to 20 years in prison for fraud.
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