The aspiring K-pop star, once wanted for fraud in Thailand, was eventually won over by her singing: She was unmasked and arrested after failing to sing Indonesia’s national anthem.

According to Indonesian media reports, 31-year-old YouTube content creator Natthamon Khongchak, known by the nickname “Nutty”, was arrested in Indonesia on October 18 and extradited to Thailand with his mother Thaniya on October 25.

Investigators in Indonesia said he tried to pass himself off as Indonesian in the city of Dumai in Riau province on the island of Sumatra.

But immigration officials there noticed his Thai accent and asked him to sing Indonesia’s national anthem, according to a report in the South China Morning Post. When he failed to do so, he and his mother were arrested for illegal entry.

Natthamon, his mother and his secretary Nichapat Rattanukrom had been on the run since July 2023.

They fled Thailand, went to Kuala Lumpur, and then boarded a boat that would take them to Indonesia.

Nichaphat is still at large.

Natthamon, who also used the aliases Leah and Suchata, was accused of defrauding thousands of her online followers out of two billion baht (S$78 million) in a currency trading scam.

From YouTube star to ‘scammer’

Natthamon has attracted more than 800,000 subscribers to his YouTube channel Nutty’s Diary.

She aspired to become a K-pop celebrity, going so far as to make a brief debut in South Korea in 2015 under the label Dream Cinema.

She started her own skin care brand the same year but has since sold the factory, according to media reports.

Local reports said he was born into a wealthy family that ran karaoke and nightlife businesses in Chiang Mai. However, fortunes changed and the family filed for bankruptcy.

After living in Malaysia with her mother for a while, she returned to Thailand, where she became the center of attention on the social media platform Socialcam for her dancing and singing mostly popular K-pop songs.

She has also been frequently praised for being an adopted daughter who has a close relationship with her mother, who appears on her YouTube channel.

Capitalizing on his popularity and image, he introduced himself as an investment guru in 2022, promising high returns to more than 6,000 people; Many of these people later reported that they had not received any payments.

He invited his followers to deposit money into his account, promising 25 percent for three-month contracts, 30 percent for six months and 35 percent for 12 months. He promised to pay them compensation every month.

He boasted 14 cars and 22 nannies.

Col. Wissanu Chimtrakul, deputy director general of Thailand’s Special Investigation Agency, told reporters that Natthamon’s assets worth about 16 million baht had been seized and that investigators were still looking for more assets that could be seized.