BANGKOK: Thai authorities arrested 12 South Koreans and a Chinese national accused of running a scam call centre from a high-end rented house south of Bangkok, police said on Tuesday (Sept 8).
The alleged scammers "entered Thailand from a neighbouring country and were hiding in Samut Prakan province, renting a luxury house", Thai police said in a statement, without naming the country.
Cambodia and Myanmar, which border Thailand, have become hubs for criminal groups operating fake romance, investment and other schemes that defraud victims around the world of billions of dollars each year.
But authorities in both nations have also raided scam compounds in recent months, pushing some scammers to set up elsewhere in the region.
Inside the house in Thailand, authorities found a call centre setup with 13 workstations equipped with Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phones and other equipment, including dozens of computers, mobile phones and scripts allegedly used in online scams.
Police also discovered a list of South Korean victims and forged documents falsely claiming to be official letters from the South Korean prosecutor's office.
"The perpetrators targeted victims in South Korea, impersonating prosecutors or South Korean government officials and making threatening phone calls," the Thai police statement said.
"The perpetrators falsely claimed to be involved in a criminal investigation and tricked victims into transferring money to them."
Thai and South Korean authorities have investigated organised criminal groups that illegally entered and hid in Thailand since last year, the statement said.
Around 40 suspects accused of call centre scams, including South Koreans and Chinese, have been arrested in Thailand since 2015.
The multibillion-dollar cyberscam industry has ballooned in Southeast Asia in recent years, with organised criminal groups initially mostly targeting Chinese speakers before widening their reach and targeting victims globally.
They recruit and traffick scammers from around the world, with individuals from at least 80 countries and territories found in scam compounds across the Mekong region, according to a UN report. - AFP
