A 30-year-old Vietnamese man wanted for fraud was arrested at Suvarnabhumi airport after he was identified by facial recognition technology as he tried to re-enter the country with a new passport, the Immigration Bureau (IB) said on Friday.
The suspect, identified only as Mr Ngoc, was detained on Oct 2 after Phichit police alerted the IB that he faced an arrest warrant on fraud charges issued by the Phichit provincial court in August this year.
Immigration police detained the man after he arrived from Vietnam with a passport number that did not match the one supplied by Phichit police.
Mr Ngoc was detained for questioning after he entered the biometric facial recognition system at the immigration checkpoint.
The system matched his face with that of the man wanted by Phichit police.
Police said the suspect admitted to being the same man named in the Phichit arrest warrant.
He said he had fled to Vietnam to apply for a new passport after the arrest warrant was issued by the Phichit provincial court on Aug 23.
According to the IB, the suspect is accused of conspiring with seven other Thai and Vietnamese nationals in running a scam involving the digital currency known as Onecoin that defrauded victims out of more than 130 million baht.
The victims were lured into believing that Onecoin was an accepted form of payment in purchases of gold, vehicles and property.
However, under Thai law, Onecoin is not certified as legal tender.