CHON BURI: Fifteen Japanese have been arrested for allegedly swindling people in their home country out of more than 25 million baht in a call-centre scam based in a luxury house of a housing estate in Pattaya.
A combined team of police from several units conducted a warranted search on the house at Siam Royal View Village in tambon Nong Prue, Bang Lamung district, at around 1am on Saturday.
The officers found 15 Japanese men inside the house. A Japanese man identified as Tomoki Chimura rented the house from Ms Weena Supawarankul for 65,000 baht a month.
Many communication devices, including 52 IP phones, which place and transmits calls on the internet, 19 notebook computers and 37 routers.
The 15 suspects were charged with running a business on temporary stay visas without permission.
Those men were Shinkuro Handa, 38; Keiji Takeda, 47; Takahide Takishta, 26; Haruki Sagara, 25; Koraro Mishiro, 29; Yoshikatsu Ueda, 49; Yutaka Ikeda, 45; Jin Kawaguchi, 22; Koichi Furuta, 24; Atsushi Uemara, 40; Yuuki Hirakawa, 32; Ryunosuke Inoue, 24; Yasutaka Toyama, 55; Ryu Iwamoto, 24 and Seiji Ikehara, 34.
Pol Lt Gen Surachate Hakparn, commissioner of the Immigration Bureau who led the search, said the suspects were members of a scam gang using Thailand as an operation base to swindle people in their country.
The gang members lured their victims by pretending to be debt collectors of a famous firm in Japan. They sent falsified bills and court warrants to the victims and then called them to ask for the payment of non-existent debts.
More than 500 Japanese people had fallen victim to the gang, with damage worth about 89 million yen (about 25 million baht), said Pol Lt Gen Surachate.