44 Chinese arrested in Thailand
Print Edition
A GANG of 44 people from China have been arrested in Thailand for running an elaborate phone scam that conned scores of victims out of US$3 million, Thai police said yesterday.
Raids on houses in Bangkok and the resort town of Pattaya snared the well-organized gang, whose targets were mainly based in China.
Police seized homemade sound-proof booths used to call the victims, who were carefully selected for their vulnerability.
“There were about 120 victims of this fraud, which was worth about 100 million (baht) (US$2.9 million),” an officer from immigration told reporters.
Nineteen of the suspects are from China’s mainland and 25 from Taiwan.
Posing as police, bank officials or money laundering inspectors, the suspects spun stories of financial irregularities linked to the victims’ bank accounts.
“They told victims their bank accounts had been frozen due to criminal activity such as drug dealing,” Immigration Police Chief Natthathorn Prousoontorn said.
They then persuaded the victims to transfer money to clear up the “problems” through other “officials” who were working with the gang.
“Each fraudster played a different role ... some pretended to be bank officials ... some pretended to be police.”
The victims lived alone and had no one to consult before falling for the scam, Natthathorn added.
With porous borders, cheap living and large communities of expats to hide among, Thailand has long been a regional hub for criminal gangs.
Recently, immigration police have arrested hundreds of foreign criminals in a “good guys in, bad guys out” policy, as the kingdom looks to shake out crooks based in the country.
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