A British beauty queen was scammed out of £93,000 by a call centre gang based in Cambodia.

Charlotte Austin, 25, who lives in Thailand, reportedly received a call from the scam group pretending to be fake police officers on December 7.

The suspects were said to have posed as Thai police and implicated her in a money laundering case involving a company called Stark Corporation.

They told her to send four million baht (93,000 GBP) 'to prove her innocence', promising to return the funds after the verification process. Charlotte obeyed and wired the cash over three transactions but her money was never returned.

The beauty queen sought help from the Cyber Crime Investigation Bureau (CCIB) in Bangkok on December 8.

Police Lieutenant General Trairong Phewphan, CCIB acting commissioner, said the receiving account belonged to a Thai housewife identified only as Parichat, 40, from a rural town.

He said in a December 15 press conference: ‘The victim's money was transferred to the account of Parichat. It was later converted into digital currency and forwarded to the account of a Chinese suspect.'

He said Parichat was arrested in Sa Kaeo province bordering Cambodia on Saturday, December 14.

The housewife reportedly admitted that she had opened the mule account that received Charlotte's money. She said she and her husband had been hired to open bank accounts for 3,500 baht (82 GBP) each. She claimed she was unaware her work was illegal.

Parichat said her employers had visited their house in Sa Kaeo to take photos of the newly obtained passbooks. The couple were also allegedly told that they would need to stay in Cambodia for two days.

Parichat and her husband were taken to the crime ring headquarters in Cambodia a few days before Charlotte was scammed.

The suspect said: 'We arrived at a building where there were 15 to 20 Thai people and around three or four Chinese supervisors. The building was secured with fingerprint scanners.

'The Chinese leaders seized the Thai people's ID cards, bankbooks, and mobile phones, forcing them to provide passwords for their mobile banking applications.'

She added that the Thai workers were detained in a locked room, where they were kept on standby to verify bank transactions. They were then given their wages before being sent back to Thailand through the same illegal channel.

Police said investigations into the scam were ongoing. The case comes amid a crack down on Chinese-run crime gangs in Thailand.

Charlotte Austin, who also has Thai nationality, was the fifth runner-up of Miss Grand Thailand 2022. Miss Grand Thailand said in a December 12 statement warned against defamatory statements that may be cause for legal action.

The organisation said: 'The company would like to inform everyone that the use of words or actions that constitute defamation or insulting others under the law may result in legal action. Such acts include using words or actions that express contempt or harm the dignity and reputation of others without any lawful justification.'

(1 GBP = 43.07 THB)