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A joint Thai-Cambodian police operation shut down, over the past weeks, five scam call centres and arrested 74 Thai scammers with all waiting to be extradited back to Thailand, the Thai cyber police said on Monday.
“Once the litigation process in Cambodia is done, the Cambodian authorities will transfer them to Thailand and me along with officers from the PCT (Police Cyber Taskforce) will pick them up in Sa Kaeo,” Police General Damrongsak Kittiprapas, deputy commissioner-general of the Royal Thai Police and PCT’s chief, told reporters.
Telephone scams have been rampant in Thailand over the past year and they continued to be a problem for phone users this year.
According to the Digital Economy and Society Ministry, 6,348 suspects were arrested in 2021 alone. More than 340 bank accounts used by call-centre gangs were seized and these accounts were involved in scams worth 569 million baht.
The ministry and Thai cyber police have issued warnings to create public awareness but the problem still persists where many phone users are receiving weekly calls from scammers.
Last week, the Cabinet approved the signing of a memorandum of understanding between the Thai digital economy ministry the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications of Cambodia on cooperation to suppress scam call-centres, illegal gambling dens and other similar gangs. Police General Damrongsak was also expected to sign the MoU in Phnom Penh on Monday.
Many of these gangs are located in Cambodia, mostly in Phnom Penh, Sihanoukville, and Poipet. The majority of them are being funded by a wider Chinese-run transnational crime syndicate.
Many of the scammers working at these call centres were Southeast Asians who were duped into working for the gangs. Even though more than 800 Thais were either arrested or rescued from these gangs over the past six months, at least a thousand more are still working for them, according to Thai cyber police.
The five scam call centres that were busted include fake forex and digital currency trading ring, an illegal online casino den, a scam call centre that pretended to be a Thai police station and a scam call centre that was giving out fake loans in Sihanoukville.
The last scam call centre that was pretending to be DHL was busted in Poipet.
Police General Damrongsak said the Thai police have issued 237 arrest warrants so far and 138 were already apprehended.