National—
On November 17th, 2023, Pol. Lt. Gen. Jiraphop Phuridej, commander of the Central Investigation Police, publicly revealed a successful operation in raiding multinational scammer dens in five different locations across Thailand.
There were five alleged scammers who were publicly identified only as Mr. Chang, a 35-year-old Chinese, Ms. Ruedee, a 29-year-old Thai, Mr. Ekanat, a 43-year-old Thai, Mr. Ekachai, a 40-year-old Thai, and Mr. Wandee, a 26-year-old Cambodian.
The police officers confiscated property in dispute such as electronic devices, supercars, and other valuable assets worth more than 83 million baht.
Pol. Lt. Gen. Jiraphop revealed to Thai national media that in June of 2023, there were fake pages impersonating the Central Investigation Bureau and other official accounts to trick victims into filing a report online via advertisements on Google Ads.
The alleged scam teams would disguise themselves as a lawyer and ask the victims to hand them evidence before lying about online gambling websites from foreign countries involved in hacking the victims’ money.
The alleged scammers then asked the victims to create an account on the fake websites made by the scammers and transfer money to play on the online gambling websites to get the money back.
According to the report from the Central Investigation Police, within 15 days, more than one thousand victims were tricked and transferred money to the alleged scammers in total of more than 8 million baht. The alleged gambling websites used an IP address from Cambodia but the server was located in Thailand.
During further investigation, more than 133 websites were created impersonating public and private organizations and investment websites and were found generating income of more than 7 billion baht via cryptocurrency to avoid arrest.
The suspect’s statements and pleas to the charges were not released to the press and it was unknown if they had an attorney as of press time.
