The owner of mule bank accounts used by a call centre gang to defraud a wealthy Thai woman out of 200 million baht has been arrested in Bangkok’s Nong Chok district, police said.
Officers from the Cyber Crime Investigation Bureau took Sombat (no surname given), 31, into custody in Khlong Sibsong area, Pol Lt Gen Worawat Watnakhonbancha, commissioner of the CCIB, said on Wednesday.
Mr Sombat, a resident of Pathum Thani, was wanted on an arrest warrant issued by the Nonthaburi provincial court on March 29 this year for alleged collusion in public fraud, posing as another person to commit fraud, and putting false information into a computer system.
His arrest followed a complaint to police by a woman in Kanchanaburi who formerly worked as a expert in vending management at a university in the United States. She fell victim to scammers claiming to be state officials.
The callers claimed her name was on a list of people believed involved in money laundering. They asked her to transfer funds to a bank account for examination of the source of the funds. The victim believed what the scammers said and had made 115 money transfers, totalling more than 200 million baht, to accounts nominated by the crooks, Pol Lt Gen Worawat said.
CCIB police followed the money trail and found that 76 people had opened mule bank accounts for this same gang. Subsequently, arrest warrants were obtained for 69 suspects, including Mr Sombat. Forty had previously been arrested, he said.
Investigators learned that Mr Sombat was in Nong Chok district, and he had now also been arrested.
During questioning, Mr Sombat told police he had applied for jobs on Facebook last year and was offered work in Cambodia at 8,000-12,000 baht a month. A vehicle was sent to take him from Pathum Thani’s Lam Luk Ka district to Sa Kaeo’s Aranyaprathet district, where he was taken across the border covertly using forest paths to Cambodia’s Poipet township.
A job broker then took him to a 25-storey building in Poipet which housed the gang's operating centre and there he was put to work, Mr Sombat said.
According to the suspect, he was given somewhere to stay and ordered to open mule bank accounts for the gang and have his face scanned to receive money transfers. He then transferred the deposited money to other accounts.
He was paid 4,000 baht for each bank account he opened, and another 1,000 baht for having his face scanned. He had worked for the gang for about six months before fleeing back to Thailand.
Mr Sombat was being held in police custody.