The Ministry of Digital Economy and Society (MDES) has opened an Anti Online Scam Operation Centre (AOC), a one-stop service aiding scam gang victims, said minister Prasert Chantararuangthong.
From March 1 last year to Sept 30 this year, there were over 330,000 cybercrime cases, causing damage worth over 45 billion baht. Mr Prasert said the AOC will reduce the number of online scams effectively within a month.
The AOC also will add an extra 80 hotline operators to the existing 20 operators for the Cyber Crime Investigation Bureau (CIB)'s hotline 1441.
Mr Prasert said the AOC's goals include freezing mule accounts immediately after victim complaints, following up on investigations for victims, arranging money recovery and applying technology to investigative work.
Assisted by AI platforms, he said the AOC is fed analytical data based on transactions, call history and financial information.
Mr Prasert said the AOC will freeze a chain of transactions within an hour after the report is filed from the victim.
The AOC is working in collaboration with the Royal Thai Police, Anti-Money Laundering Office, National Broadcasting and Telecommunication Commission and Securities and Exchange Commission.
Any wrongdoing will proceed according to the Computer-Related Crime Act and Anti-Money Laundering Act, Mr Prasert added.
The AOC also backs up the victim's privacy by using the MDES cloud service, whose IT management system is certified by ISO 27001, ISO 200001 and CSA-STAR. The database is also regulated by the government's Personal Data Protection Act. As a part of the AOC's mission, Mr Prasert said Facebook was working with the centre by taking down up to 700 Facebook scamming pages per day, an increase of 10 per day.