BANGKOK: Thailand has issued an arrest warrant for a Chinese businessman featured in a Reuters investigation into transnational crypto-investment fraud, alleging he was part of a network that laundered money from scams and online gambling through illegal cryptocurrency mining.
Wang Yicheng was the subject of the 2023 Reuters report that detailed how an account in his name received millions of dollars from a crypto wallet that a US blockchain analysis firm said was linked to scam operations, even as he cultivated ties to Thai political and law enforcement elites.
Police Major Woranan Srilam, a spokesman for Thailand's Department of Special Investigation, said on Tuesday (June 23) that Wang had been charged in November with theft as well as under the Computer Crimes Act, which covers interfering with systems. "The suspect is believed to have fled the country,” he told Reuters in a text message, adding that Thai authorities were working with international counterparts to locate him.
South-East Asia cracks down on Chinese-run scam syndicates
Wang did not respond to a request for comment. China's Foreign Ministry said it was not aware of the situation. The DSI said in a statement last week it had issued arrest warrants for four unnamed Chinese and four Myanmar nationals.
The statement described Wang, a former leader of a Thai-Chinese trade association, as a key figure in a group of Chinese investors allegedly using illegal crypto mining to launder proceeds from scams and online gambling.
Thailand and other South-East Asian nations have in recent months intensified crackdowns on largely Chinese-run scam syndicates. These operations are often run from industrial compounds staffed partly by trafficking victims and generate billions of dollars annually, according to the United Nations.
The DSI said it uncovered the network while investigating illegal crypto mining operations that illicitly used some US$28 million worth of electricity, among the largest such cases in recent years.
Transnational organised crime groups use illegal crypto mining to "generate income, launder money, and drive technology-crime networks,” the agency said. The statement said US law enforcement had also identified Wang as a suspect in a digital-asset fraud case. In June 2023, the United States seized about US$500,000 in cryptocurrency from an account in his name, saying funds stolen from a Massachusetts victim were traced there.
The US Department of Justice declined to comment on the arrest warrant.
Wang's name linked to 'pig-butchering' crypto scams
The Reuters investigation found that a crypto wallet in Wang's name received at least $9.1 million between 2021 and 2022 from an account that TRM Labs and other blockchain firms linked to "pig-butchering" scams, in which victims are deceived into fraudulent crypto investments.
The investigation could not determine whether Wang was behind the account or whether someone else had used his identity to open it. Some of the scams described in the Reuters investigation were tied to KK Park, an industrial park on the Myanmar-Thailand border, according to one of the firms.
One scam victim, a 71-year-old California man, lost his US$2.7 million life savings after being approached by someone posing as a young woman online.
At the time the wallet in Wang's name received the scam-linked funds, he was vice president of the Thai-Asia Economic Exchange Trade Association, which promotes Thai-Chinese business ties and whose leaders cultivated links with officials in both countries including senior Thai police.
Major bitcoin mining firm Bitmain told Reuters in 2023 that Wang was a close partner and customer, adding that it supplied its equipment legally. Bitmain and the Bangkok-based trade group did not respond to requests for comment from Reuters on the Thai warrant for Wang.
After the 2023 report, the trade group told Reuters that Wang had left its board, adding that background checks had found no criminal record and that his personal affairs were unrelated to the organisation. It said some Thai officials were "advisers and friends" of the group but there were no further "business or financial interests” between advisers and the trade group or its members.
Thailand’s Royal Thai Police did not immediately respond to a request for comment about ties between senior officials and Wang. - Reuters
