Police have dismantled two Chinese scam networks responsible for more than 700 million fraudulent calls and one million fake SMS messages over just three days.
Assistant national police chief and deputy director of Thailand's Action Taskforce for Information Technology Crime Suppression (Tactics), Pol Lt Gen Thatchai Pitaneelabut, released a statement yesterday about two recent operations by the police in which the two scam groups were brought down.
He said the operations were carried out as part of Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra's urgent policy of cracking down on cybercrime and transnational crime.
In the first operation, authorities found a crime syndicate that rented over 10,000 phone numbers starting with 02 and used them to call victims to persuade them to participate in fraudulent investment schemes.
Investigations showed these numbers were used over 730 million times by three companies with connections to Chinese nationals despite there being no record of their physical presence in Thailand. Arrest warrants were issued for 24 suspects, including nine foreigners and 15 Thais, with 10 individuals already apprehended.
In the other operation, the police arrested Chinese national Yang Muyi, 35, who used false base stations installed in a vehicle to send nearly a million fake SMS messages to pedestrians on Sukhumvit Road in Bangkok over a three-day period.
The messages aimed to lure recipients into fraudulent schemes. The equipment included a mobile power station, a Wi-Fi router and multiple smartphones.
The man was charged with unauthorised possession and use of telecommunication devices, among other punishable offences.