The Bangkok Post reported that 32-year-old Jariyaporn Buayai was arrested in Tambon Kratumlom, Samphran in the Nakhon Pathom province of Thailand. Seven men had filed complaints against Jariyaporn, saying that she tricked them into marrying her before running off with their dowries that measured in the tens of thousands of dollars. The complaints joined five outstanding warrants for Jariyaporn's arrest on charges of fraud and embezzlement.
The seven men have hired a lawyer, Songkran Achariyasap, who says that Jariyaporn approached each men in turn via Facebook. First, she struck up a romantic relationship with them before asking them to invest in her "fruit trade business." After sleeping with the men, she would ask them to marry her and then vanish once they paid her their dowries.
One victim, 32-year-old Prasarn Thiamyaem, said that he met Jariyaporn in February 2015 where she convinced him to give her 200,000 baht ($8,110) as an investment into her business. She then had sex with him and claimed that he had gotten her pregnant.
Prasarn married her and gave her another $8,110 in dowry. The couple lived in married bliss for four days before Jariyaporn told him she urgently needed to return to her hometown to help her parents with their fruit business. That was the last he heard of her.
Later, Prasarn alleges, a relative of Jariyaporn's contacted him and told him that his vanished wife had a miscarriage and never wanted to see him again.
But he only realized he had been scammed after he saw a Facebook post from another one of Jariyaporn's alleged victims, warning men to stay away from her.
Pirat Puengsuk, 28, told The Nation that he spent about $30,000 on both a dowry and a new car for Jariyaporn after a two-month Facebook courtship. He claimed that she offered to induct him into her family's fruit business.
"She demanded that I marry her before investing in the business together because it was her family's tradition. If we weren't married, we couldn't do business together."
Another man, who chose to stay anonymous, told Khaosod that the "serial bride" tricked him into depositing $15,092 into her bank account as dowry, before telling him a "bad horoscope" had dissuaded her from marrying him and vanishing.
The police also arrested Jariyaporn's "real" husband. Jariyaporn claims that the men had voluntarily invested money in her fruit business and she hadn't deceived any of them.
While dowries are common in Thai culture as a way for grooms to prove to the bride's family that he is capable of financially supporting their daughter, the Thai embassy claims that dowries are usually returned to the married couple after the wedding. This is the opposite of the dowry system in other South Asian countries, where it is the bride's family that pays the groom.
