Thai police nab Malaysian for involvement with call centre scam syndicate

BANGKOK: Thai police arrested a 38-year-old Malaysian man who was suspected to have been hired by a call centre scam syndicate to withdraw money belonging to the victims.
According to the deputy commander of Tourist Police Bureau Maj Gen Surachet Hakpan, the police began investigating the syndicate after three victims reported that they were cheated a total of 1.3 million baht (RM158,000).
"The suspect earned about 4% in commission for withdrawing the victim's money. Once he withdrew the money, he would immediately leave the Kingdom," he told reporters during a media conference, today.
Surachet, who is also the head of Royal Thai Police's (RTP) call centre scam suppression operation centre, said the Malaysian usually entered Thailand alone using a tourist visa and would stay in the country for four to five days.
He also said, he and his Malaysian counterpart had held a recent meeting in Malaysia about issues related to scam syndicates.
He said his Malaysian counterpart informed him that they had to deal with about 450 scam issues a year, involving financial losses amounting to 1 billion baht (RM123 million), compared to about 100 cases and 100 million baht (RM12.3 million) in losses in Thailand.
Meanwhile, Provincial Police Region 5 in a media conference in Khon Kaen, northeast Thailand today announced they had arrested a Russian, a Taiwanese and five Thais for swindling a total of 1.6 million baht (RM197,000) from its victims.
All male suspects were arrested in various parts of the country beginning late last year until middle of this month for operating a call centre scam syndicate, which also had bases in Taiwan, India and Russia.
According to its commissioner Lt Gen Surachai Kuandachacupt, the call centre syndicate called random phone numbers using the Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) that enabled them to falsely display the caller number.
He said the Russian and Taiwanese men have some background in banking and finance, while some of the Thais arrested in the case were graduates in the fields of finance and economics. — Bernama