Common Thailand Scams Targeting Foreigners
As a first timer, I also got ripped off when I didn’t know any better. But after countless trips and even living in Pattaya for over a year, you quickly learn a lot of the methods these ladies use.
1. Pretending to Be Interested in a Serious Relationship (But Only Sticking Around for Financial Support)
One of the most common ways some Thai girls, especially bar girls, rinse farangs out of money is by pretending to be genuinely interested in a serious, long term relationship when their real goal is just to get as much money as possible.
They’ll act sweet, attentive, and loving, making you believe you’ve finally found someone special and, of course, different from the rest. Trust me, these girls know exactly what to say and when to say it to pull on your heartstrings.
They might call you “terak” or “my husband” early on, talk about the future, and even introduce you to their friends or family to make you feel important. These emotional games make it easier for them to ask for money without raising much suspicion from their new farangs.
Don’t be fooled, though behind it all, they don’t care about your happiness or a future together; they care about the money you bring. The relationship can feel like an emotional rollercoaster, where affection and attention come only when you’re spending or sending cash.
If you show signs that you are not going to give her much or just flat out refuse, then suddenly that crazy love she has for you disappears and is replaced by coldness or excuses.
This tactic is often used because it taps into the loneliness many foreigners feel, and unfortunately, many of them look in bars hoping to find a nice Thai woman. The key to avoiding it is to watch for signs that she is only spending time with you when money is involved. Genuine relationships don’t rely on constant cash transfers. So be wary if someone’s love seems to come with a price tag.
2. Constantly Borrowing Small Amounts for “Emergencies” That Never Get Repaid
If you have been dating a girl or having a holiday romance with a girl, she might start asking to borrow money. It usually starts with something small just a few hundred baht here or there.
Maybe she says her younger sister needs money for school, or her motorbike broke down and she’s short on cash for repairs. The amounts seem minor, so you don’t think much of it at first. She promises she’ll pay you back as soon as possible, and she even seems embarrassed to ask. So, of course, you help.
She might just straight up ask if she can have the money rather than borrowing it and promising to pay it back. But then, just a few days later, there’s another “urgent” situation. Someone’s sick. Rent is due. Her phone needs its screen repaired. Over time, these little emergencies start to pile up and the repayments never come.
With this one, it’s not the size of the requests that gets you. It’s the frequency and the emotional manipulation behind them. By asking for small sums, she avoids raising red flags, but over weeks or months, those amounts add up.
She knows most farangs don’t track the small stuff, and they don’t want to seem petty by demanding repayment of a few hundred baht. By the time you realize what’s happening, you’ve been slowly drained without ever being asked for a “big favor.”
3. Pressuring You to Pay bar fines So She Can Leave Work Early with You
If you meet your girl in a bar, like so many men seem to do, it’s going to start costing you. When you meet a bar girl you like, it’s easy to get swept up in the attention and forget that this is just a job to her.
She’s laughing at your jokes, holding your arm, and making you feel like the only guy in the room. The only problem is, if you want to see her out of the bar, you will need to pay the bar fine. And if you don’t want to pay the bar fine or go to the bar and spend money on lady drinks all night, then she’s going to go straight onto the next guy.
This is okay if it’s just a one off thing, but if you end up wanting to see her more often, you will have to keep paying it. Other times, she might ask you to pay the bar fine multiple times in a week, spinning a story about how hard work is and how badly she wants to be with you instead.
Guys can never forget that bar fines aren’t about love or chemistry. They’re business. And if a girl is pressuring you hard to pay it every night, you need to ask yourself: is she really into you, or is she just doing what she does with every other guy who walks in the door?
A girl who genuinely likes you might wait until after work to see you or suggest meeting on her day off. If money is always the requirement to spend time together, that’s not romance. That’s a transaction.
4. Creating Fake Family Problems and Asking for Money to “Help Relatives”
It usually comes out of nowhere. It can be a late night message or phone call where she’s putting on the waterworks. She tells you her mother just got rushed to the hospital, or her younger brother was in a motorbike accident. Sometimes it’s a grandma who needs surgery, or an uncle who suddenly passed away and there’s no money for the funeral. The story feels urgent, like she’s panicking about what to do, and she tells you she doesn’t know who else to turn to. You care about her, and you don’t want to see her or her family suffer, so you send the money. After all, it’s for family, right?
But the truth is, many of these stories are completely made up or at best, greatly exaggerated. The “emergency” might just be a new phone she wants to buy, or rent she’s behind on. And because she uses family as the excuse, it hits your emotions harder.
Most foreigners don’t want to be seen as heartless or selfish, so they pay up. In reality, some girls have a rotating list of tragedies they use on different men, knowing how to guilt trip and manipulate you into handing over money.
After you spend a lot of time in the bars talking to these girls, you will hear a lot of similar emergency stories that they all seem to be going through. One week it’s a hospital bill, next week it’s school fees, and then it’s helping rebuild the family home after a storm, none of which ever actually happened.
This trick works because it puts you in a no win situation. If you send the money, she knows you’re an easy target. If you don’t, she acts hurt or distant, making you feel like you let her down.
The best way to protect yourself? Ask for proof. Suggest talking to the hospital or helping in another way that doesn’t involve direct cash. If she gets angry or dodges your questions, that’s your answer.
5. Asking You to Buy Mobile Phones
It starts with her mentioning “Oh, my phone is so old and slow,” or “my phone is breaking; I won’t be able to video chat with you when you are away,” or something along those lines.
Or a common trick some Thai girls use is the “stolen phone“ excuse. She’ll message the guy, often through a friend’s phone or social media, saying her phone was stolen or lost during a night out. She’ll act upset, maybe even cry, and say she can’t video call you, text you selfies, and all that stuff until she gets a new phone.
She needs a new phone, and she hopes you can help. She might even say she doesn’t want a fancy one, just something “basic,” while mentioning an iPhone.
If she has a guy that is madly in love with her and would do anything for her, of course he’s going to want to help her out so he can get those late night video calls and continue his long distance relationship with her. So he sends the money, thinking he’s doing a good thing.
The phone was never stolen at all. She either wanted to upgrade, already had the phone, or planned to sell the one he buys. Once the money is sent, she will carry on normally with the guy she’ll just have more money now.
Don’t buy these girls phones; they use this as an excuse all the time, especially when you go back to your country.
6. Don’t Buy Girls Gold
Another classic trick is the gold chain guilt trip. The girl tells the foreigner that in Thai culture, it’s a sign of love and respect for a man to buy gold for his woman. She’ll say it’s a tradition, especially if things are getting serious between them.
So, to prove his love to her and wanting to show that he cares about her and her culture, he buys her a nice gold necklace. But here’s what many don’t realize: she’s pulling the same move on more than one guy.
She might get three or four men to each buy her the same kind of gold necklace. Then she pawns most of them for quick cash. She only keeps one just in case one of the guys wants to see that she still has it. That way, she can proudly wear it when he visits and claim it’s the one he bought, even though it might have come from someone else.
It’s a sneaky system, but it works, especially with guys who don’t know how common this trick really is.
So, not that any man should be buying a girl that he just met any gold anyway, but just know that if you do, as soon as you leave, she’s going to be taking it to the pawn shop.
7. Using Sob Stories About Her “Poor Background” to Guilt Trip You into Sending Cash
This usually comes up in the first few conversations. She tells you she’s from a small village in Isan or up in the hills near the Laos border. Her stories are full of struggle she had to drop out of school at a young age, help raise her siblings, or work on the farm instead of having a childhood.
She met a Thai man, started a family with him, but he was horrible to her and walked out on her and his child, leaving her to raise the child on her own. She had to give the child to her parents to raise while she shot off to Pattaya or Bangkok to make money by doing things she didn’t want to do.
It makes you feel sorry for her, like she’s just trying to do whatever she can to make money, even if she doesn’t want to do that. And that’s when the guilt starts creeping in especially if you’re coming from a Western country where even a bad day is better than what she’s describing.
She doesn’t come right out and ask for money at first. Instead, she lets you connect the dots. These little comments about her life and how hard she has had it build up until you start offering help on your own.
Maybe you give her a few thousand baht to “help her out,” thinking you’re doing something kind. But soon, that becomes the expectation and if you ever stop, she makes you feel like you’ve turned your back on her.
Yes, some Thai girls really do come from hard places. But the difference is in how it’s used. A good person won’t make you feel guilty to gain something from you. I’m sure many girls do not want to be working in Pattaya, but it’s not like they have no choice. When she tells you this stuff, ask yourself: is she telling you the story or selling it to you?
8. The Sick Child Scam
Whether you’ve been seeing her for a few weeks or you are already home and doing a long distance relationship with her, she’s more than likely going to drop this line if she has kids. Her child is most probably being raised by her parents while she is in Pattaya or wherever making money.
She will tell you that the child has become very sick or ended up in the hospital, and guess what comes with that? Big hospital bills and medication bills. She might even send you a photo of a kid in a hospital bed and say it’s her child from a previous relationship. In either case, the message is the same: “I need help, and you’re the only one I can turn to.”
She says she can’t afford medicine or hospital fees and asks if you can help. If you already consider yourself in a relationship with this girl, then of course you will consider helping because it’s apparently your girlfriend after all.
Don’t be fooled, though. Some of these girls will pull this trick on guys they have just met if they consider them an easy target. This doesn’t just happen if you are in a relationship.
The truth is, there is no sick child. Some bar girls have used the same photo with multiple men. If she refuses to show proof, avoids doctor visits, or gets defensive when you ask for details, that’s your red flag. Real problems can be backed up. Scams fall apart under questions.
9. The Visa Scam
The visa scam is another move some girls use when they find a foreigner who’s serious about them. She’ll talk about how much she wants to visit his country to be with him, start a new life, or leave the bar scene behind. She’ll say she’s tired of Thailand and wants a better future, that she never liked doing bar work in the first place.
It sounds like a sweet and honest dream, and the guy feels like he’s part of something special. Then she brings up the visa process how she needs help with documents, flights, and especially money to make it happen.
What he doesn’t know is that she’s played this game before. She will say she is trying to get everything sorted but will constantly be asking for money for a new type of document. “The agency said I need this, which is 5,000 baht; they also said I need that, which is 8,000 baht.” The price just keeps going up.
If she does, however, finally get the visa approved and the ticket bought, she either disappears completely or delays the trip with excuse after excuse. Nine times out of ten, she never applied for a visa or used any of the money to even start the process. It’s just another way for her to get money from her farang.
If you do have a serious girlfriend there and you truly want her to visit your country and believe that she does too, then do the whole process by yourself or make sure you are there while she is doing it. Make sure all the money and time is going toward the visa; do not be fooled into paying fees for things that don’t even exist.
10. The “Study English” Scam
Some Thai girls will tell a foreigner that they want to leave the bar scene and start fresh by studying English. In fact, most of these scams start by telling the guy that she wants to leave the bar because it makes them sound different. And what type of guy wants their girlfriend working in a bar anyway? It’s the perfect excuse.
It sounds genuine, like she’s trying to improve her life, maybe even get a regular job or prepare to live abroad in your country. She’ll say that learning English is the first step, and she wants to do it for him, to be a better girlfriend so they can do more things together in the future.
Then she’ll bring up how expensive classes are and ask if he can help pay for them. She might even send photos of a school brochure or show screenshots of a course she wants to join.
But in many cases, she never plans to go to class at all. The money ends up being spent on other things shopping, partying, or even sent back to her family. She might drag it out by saying the school is closed, she’s sick, or the schedule changed.
Some even go as far as faking attendance by sending pictures near a school or in a classroom for show. Meanwhile, the guy thinks he’s supporting her new future, but really, he’s just funding her current lifestyle.
Don’t fall for this one; even if your intentions are just to help her out, the only thing you are helping out with is a good night out for her.
11. The Fake Pregnancy Scam
The fake pregnancy scam is one of the most emotionally manipulative tricks out there and that’s not just in Thailand but in the rest of the world. It’s an easy way to get the man attached to her, whether they have just started a relationship or things are bad and he’s about to leave. Her saying she is pregnant is emotional blackmail to get him to stay.
A girl will message the foreigner after they’ve been together for a while, sometimes even after just one night, and say she’s pregnant. She might sound scared, emotional, or even excited, depending on what she thinks will work best.
If she knows that you want a future with her and to build a family, she’s going to sound excited, like it’s the best thing to ever happen. However, if she knows you have a plan to leave her if things haven’t been working out, then she’s going to act sad and scared.
Then comes the request: she needs help. Either she wants to keep the baby and needs money for doctor visits and medicine, or she says she wants to get rid of it but can’t afford the procedure.
This kind of lie is hard for many men to ignore. The idea of becoming a father especially in another country is a serious thing. So the guy sends money, wanting to do the right thing. But in reality, there’s often no pregnancy at all. Some girls use this story with multiple men, recycling the same drama whenever they need fast cash.
In the end, the foreigner is left not knowing what to do or what’s going to happen next, while she walks away with a handful of money and no baby in sight.
12. The “Leave the Bar” Scam
As mentioned earlier, most excuses start with “I want to leave the bar scene” to make you think that she is different and hates doing this type of work. You don’t want her working in the bar as you are now her boyfriend; you also want her to leave that life behind.
She tells you that she wants to leave the bar life behind because she’s fallen for you and wants a nice future together. She says working in the bar makes her feel ashamed, and she doesn’t want to meet other men anymore because she has you and loves you. It sounds like a dream for many guys that she’s ready to change her life for love.
But then comes the condition: she can only quit if he supports her each month. Rent, food, phone bills. She’ll say she needs help while she looks for a new job or waits to move in with him.
The problem is, many girls say this to several men at the same time. She tells each one that he’s “the only one,” while collecting money from all of them. Meanwhile, she continues working at the bar or seeing other guys on the side.
If you stop giving her a monthly salary, she will threaten you that she needs to go back to the bar and make money and no boyfriend wants that.
If you are already at this stage in your relationship and you have been supporting her for leaving the bar, I would find a way to check she has actually left and do not take her word for it.
13. The Fake Injury Scam
The fake injury scam usually starts with a sudden message from the girl, saying she had a bad bike accident. She’ll send photos of bruises, bandages, even a wrecked motorbike.
She might say she’s in the hospital, can’t work, and needs help covering medical bills. She’ll sound scared, maybe even embarrassed to ask, but says she has no one else to turn to. The goal is to make the foreigner panic and feel sorry for her, thinking he’s the only one who can save the day.
But here’s the truth: the injuries are fake. Some girls use old or staged photos or even pull pictures from online. There was never any accident. It’s all a setup to get quick money.
Some guys rush to send thousands of baht without even checking if it’s real. And once the money‘s in her hands, the “recovery” happens fast or she disappears completely. It’s another dirty trick that pulls on your heartstrings.
