Police Arrest 90 Gang Members at 8 Locations Including Hotels
Human Trafficking and Employment Fraud Used to Recruit and Mobilize Criminals
Thai police conducted a crackdown operation on a criminal organization committing online fraud, successfully arresting 90 people.
According to local media including the Bangkok Post on the 30th, the Police Special Investigation Division raided eight locations including buildings, houses, and hotels in the Cha Wang area of Nakhon Si Thammarat Province in the south the day before. Among those arrested were 55 Chinese nationals and 35 Thai nationals.
They are known to have set up call centers locally in Thailand and carried out fraudulent activities related to cryptocurrency investment, online gambling, and shopping. Some of those arrested testified that they were forcibly recruited into the crimes.
The police seized 228 computers, 1,037 mobile phones, 80 bankbooks, and weapons at the scene.
The so-called Golden Triangle region, including Myanmar, Laos, and Thailand, as well as Southeast Asia in general, is considered a hotbed of online crime. Criminal organizations are known to recruit people through human trafficking or employment scams, detain them, and force them to participate in crimes.
Thai police also received information that a Chinese organization was using the Nakhon Si Thammarat area as a base to commit crimes and launched the crackdown.
Interpol estimated that "online criminal organizations operating in Southeast Asia have expanded globally, generating criminal profits amounting to $3 trillion (approximately 4,000 trillion KRW) annually," and expressed concern that "online criminal organizations have rapidly expanded since the COVID-19 pandemic, and crimes originating in Southeast Asia have escalated into a global human trafficking crisis."
The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) analyzed in a report last August that international criminal organizations have mobilized hundreds of thousands of Southeast Asians in their crimes.
Meanwhile, in December last year, nine Thai nationals who were forced to work in an online fraud organization in Cambodia dramatically escaped and returned to their home country.
They had been deceived by promises of high wages and travel expenses and worked at a call center run by a Chinese criminal organization inside a casino building in Poipet, a Cambodian border city adjacent to Aranyaprathet in Sa Kaeo Province, eastern Thailand.
The victims testified that their mobile phones were confiscated and they were not allowed to go outside, claiming that about 200 Thais are still held captive in the call center.
They played roles in making scam calls such as voice phishing targeting Thai people, and if they refused, they were subjected to beatings or death threats. It was also reported that women were forced into prostitution.
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