SINGER’S LOVE SMEAR SUIT, CONDOMS AT DAWN, DOWRY ROW
Too much time on their hands
Singer Utain “Teh” Prommin has challenged the admin of a muckraking gossip site on Facebook who suggested falsely he was seeing a young fan on the sly.
Teh visited police last week to take advice after a Facebook site, J’ Moi 108, said a young woman after his affections was trying to wedge herself between the velvety-voiced singer and his wife.
She posted images from the woman’s Facebook of the singer and the young woman with her face obscured, and a Line chat in which the singer supposedly offers to send her money so they can take a romantic trip to the seaside together. An ATM slip for a cash transfer of 30,000 baht bearing the name of “Utain” is also flouted as supposed proof of their ties.
While J’ Moi suggests the young woman may have made up the saga, she also raises the prospect that Teh, who she does not name directly but whom she notes is married and has a young child, has spun a separate world for himself and a secret lover.
Netizens quickly pointed the finger at Teh, who denied the claims but said the saga had led to speculation about the stability of his marriage. He was travelling to a concert in Amnat Charoen on Feb 22 when the posts appeared. His wife, Prinda “Hnoi” Kiatsermsakul, urged him to go ahead with the concert while she and her friends did some digging.
By the time he left the stage they had discovered the identity of the original poster, who later made contact to apologise for the smear. After Teh denied the claims J’ Moi also said sorry for smearing his name. She posted a chat with the young woman, a fan of Teh’s who claims a friend who knew the password of her Facebook site made up the love affair saga as a tease.
This friend went to the trouble of faking a Line chat. As for the cash transfer, she said it was from someone else with the same name. She claims she did not see the posts until Teh issued his denial.
Unimpressed with J’ Moi’s apology, Teh and his wife laid a complaint with Huai Kwang police, and later visited the Technology Crime Suppression Division. Appearing before the media with Pol Col Siriwat Deepor, the division’s deputy head, Teh said the claims had damaged his reputation and upset his family. He would take defamation action against the site, its followers who criticised him, and the young woman behind the campaign.
Teh said the young woman asked for a fan photo with him during a concert last month in Chiang Mai. “I have taken a look at her Facebook. She filmed a song of mine, and left a comment saying she was waiting for the man of her dreams. When she posted the ATM slip and people asked if I had sent her money she said nothing, but posted emoticons of love hearts,” he said.
The singer’s wife Hnoi said she and Teh were a close team and had been together 10 years. As soon as she saw the Line chat she knew it wasn’t her husband. “Our whole family was affected by these claims. You can’t do what they did without bothering to check the facts,” Hnoi said.
Teh said the young woman was now suffering a backlash on social media for damaging his name. “She says she is not game to leave her car when she drops her child at school for fear of being abused. While I feel sorry for her, she must take a share of responsibility.
“As for the admin J’ Moi, I know her identity through a friend and could unmask her if I chose. However, I would rather she went before the media and apologised,” he said. She had used his image as a means to attract public scorn, and it was only fair she should suffer the same treatment.
“I would like to ask J’ Moi: where’s your contrition? By the next day you had lost interest in me. You were busy dishing dirt on others, as if you look for ways to cause trouble every day to gain popularity,” he said. J’ Moi, who has 520,000 followers, has stayed mum on the challenge.
‘Pretty’ two-timer comes a cropper
A “pretty” product presenter has apologised to her boyfriend for deceiving him while also threatening legal action against her social media critics after a domestic drama about a missing toothbrush led to his discovery she was seeing someone else.
Naminara “JubJib” Pattaravanichsakul, also known as Jiraporn Homsanan in news reports, was once a plain looking girl who won a cosmetic surgery makeover to dramatically alter her appearance in Workpoint TV’s Let Me in Thailand (Season 3).
She admitted she had been unfaithful after her boyfriend confronted her with the unseemly evidence — used condoms he discovered when he went looking for his missing toothbrush.
Her boyfriend, known in the media as Nong Korn, 19, posted a video of him throwing the used condoms at JubJib in the heated moments after his discovery. He bursts into tears while demanding she explain the find. JubJib seems divided between trying to stop him filming and consoling Korn. In the end she admits she was at fault, and in a Facebook post later apologises for having duped Korn.
Korn went in search of his toothbrush, which normally sits in a holder with that of JubJib. His girlfriend said she put in the cabinet below the basin. He thought nothing of it then, but when he noticed it missing a second time sometime later, grew suspicious.
He went digging in the rubbish bin and found the condoms, which JubJib admitted were hers. However, he knew they didn’t belong to him as they were a different make from the ones they usually use, and they hadn’t made love in ages.
After Korn posted the video and complained he had been deceived, JubJib was forced to admit she had been unfaithful. She wrote: “I deceived my boyfriend by creating a ‘second world’ with another man. I am solely to blame; criticise me as harshly as you like.
“I did it owing to lust and ignorance. My boyfriend is the best you could hope to find. I was shameless in not knowing when enough was enough.” While apologising to Korn, she also threatened legal action against netizens who spread lies about her.
Korn said he is staying with a friend at a hostel and has not been back to see JubJib.
It’s not JubJib’s first brush with controversy. The decision to award her the cosmetic surgery prize on Let Me In Thailand in late 2017 angered many viewers, with JubJib accused of painting too unflattering a portrait of herself on TV to grab the prize. She later apologised.
Marriage deception ends in court
A building contractor is taking legal advice after the woman he was engaged to marry quietly married someone else, and her family refused to return his dowry.
Thongtham “Top” Puuaow, 25, revealed his lover’s duplicity on Facebook earlier this month, propelling him to social media fame. He said he was shocked to discover his girlfriend, Oiy, had married her new boss on the sly in Maha Sarakham on Jan 19.
Top said his elder sister found out about the wedding and sent him the pictures, which he posted alongside images from their engagement ceremony last July.
He gave Oiy’s family a 200,000 baht down payment on the dowry he agreed with them of 599,999 baht and five baht weight in gold. After discovering she had since married someone else, he asked for the money back, but her family said he will have to take them to court.
Top, from Kalasin, said he and Oiy met on Facebook a couple of years ago. They were seeing each other a few months when Oiy’s family, worried about appearances, asked him to “do the right thing” and get engaged or stop seeing her. They agreed on the dowry and were formally engaged on July 15.
At the time he was working in Bangkok, and when free he would drive to see her in Khon Kaen, where she was studying. When she graduated she moved to Bangkok to find work and moved in with him.
In August, however, Oiy’s mother asked Oiy to join her in Maha Sarakham province where she found work at a hotel, and quietly started seeing her boss. Top said the first he knew Oiy had carved out a secret romantic life for herself was when his sister sent her the pictures of Oiy’s Jan 19 wedding. He said he felt like fainting, could barely eat and lost 4kg.
At first he did not let on that he knew. However, on Jan 23 Oiy asked if they could split up, and he confronted her with the pictures. He also told her his parents were unhappy about her conduct.
Faced with the evidence, Oiy admitted she was now married. She agreed to return the dowry but kept putting it off. Later, her father told Top bluntly that if he wanted the money back he would have to take them to court.
After the saga hit the news, an Amarin TV reporter went to visit Oiy’s family in Maha Sarakham. A relative said Oiy and her mother could not accept Top going public and she was not ready to front the media. However, the relative complained that after Top moved in with her in January he refused to get work and was living off her financially. Later, after he moved out, they assumed he had lost interest.
Top, who disputes that version of events, agreed there was a period in November last year when he would ask for money as he had no work. “However, since my new building business opened I have been in work constantly. I would stay with her in Maha Sarakham on weekends and return to Kalasin on weekdays where I was working.” He denied leaving her, saying he simply moved some of his belongings out after starting work in Kalasin.
“I would like to ask her family if agreeing to her marrying another man and arranging the wedding even though our engagement was still in place was the right thing to do,” Top retorted, adding Oiy claimed her parents had pressured her into marrying her boss. He is consulting a lawyer about the return of the dowry.