Thailand the new eye of SE Asias scam center storm

BANGKOK – Thailand seized more than US$300 million in a new crackdown against international criminals allegedly laundering money through two banks in Bangkok from online scam centers in neighboring Cambodia and Myanmar but the top suspects are still at large.

“The individuals involved are all scammers. Three or four who have been arrested are major players,” Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul announced on December 3 after a nationwide investigation. “The seized or frozen assets amount to more than 10 billion baht ($312.5 million),” Anutin said without naming the arrested people.

They were charged with “conspiracy, running a criminal association, public fraud, and money laundering,” a summary of the police report said.

More than a dozen top suspects are still at large including, “Yim Leak, chairman of BIC Group, a financial network in Cambodia, who was suspected of bringing criminal proceeds into Thailand for money laundering or business investment,” it said.

Cash was allegedly laundered through fake “mule accounts” before reaching two of Thailand’s biggest banks. “They were Bangkok Bank and Kasikornbank accounts held by Cambodian businessman Yim Leak,” the Bangkok Post reported on December 4.

“These accounts received more than three billion baht ($93.8 million) in all. Further investigation led police to identify 42 suspects, 29 of whom were arrested,” it said.

The crackdown was launched by a newly formed “Uproot Transnational Scammers” team, including the Justice Ministry, Central Investigation Bureau, Special Operations Division, Economic Crime Suppression Division, the National Police Agency’s Cyber Crime Suppression Center, and the Anti-Money Laundering Office (AMLO).

The powerful Internal Security Operations Command, established in 1965 during the Cold War with the US Central Intelligence Agency to suppress communism and other political and military threats, is also involved under Anutin’s direct authority.

The arrests and seizures come two weeks after investigative reporter Tom Wright warned that Thailand was allegedly being used by scammers as a money laundering hub.

“If you allow that kind of stuff to happen and flow into your country, buy your politicians, and buy your companies, illegally and secretively…then the sovereignty of your country is in question, right?” Wright said from Singapore in a virtual event held at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand (FCCT) on November 19.

In Cambodia, for example, “to launder huge amounts of money, they put bags of cash on private jets that get flown from Phnom Penh into Thailand,” Wright said.

Yim Leak and his wife allegedly helped move money for Benjamin Mauerberger, alias Ben Smith, AMLO said on December 3.

“Both individuals had companies in Thailand registered at the same address, and engaged in cross-shareholding between their wives, particularly in real estate and private aviation businesses – business types frequently used to disguise illegal money trails,” the police summary said.

Mauerberger was sanctioned in the Dismantle Foreign Scam Syndicates Act introduced in the US Congress in September.

The act sought “to establish an interagency Task Force to dismantle and shut down transnational criminal syndicates perpetuating mass online scam operations against Americans.”

Wright, a former Wall Street Journal reporter whose “Whale Hunting” website examines financial scandals worldwide, is investigating Mauerberger, who hobnobs with Cambodian, Thai and other political leaders and investors.

“For weeks, we’ve been reporting on how South African money launderer Benjamin Mauerberger sits at the center of a sprawling Chinese-Cambodian criminal scam network,” Wright said on December 3.

“We’ve shown how Mauerberger laundered hundreds of millions of dollars, paying huge bribes to Thai politicians and bureaucrats, undermining the country’s democracy, and fueling one of the world’s fastest-growing crimes.

“Now, Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul’s government has seized $300 million in assets, including yachts, luxury cars, and Thai equities. In a statement today, [Thai] police put Mauerberger squarely at the center of a criminal network, the first time Thailand’s government has acknowledged this,” Wright posted on his site.

Mauerberger is a “super-connected” South African with several passports, including a “diplomatic passport” from Cambodia. “He is believed to be in Dubai at the moment,” after being based in Thailand for more than 20 years, Wright claimed.

“Among the most serious falsehoods are claims that I am involved in Cambodian money laundering, call-center scams, and human trafficking,” Mauerberger said in October. “I have never had and will never have, any connection to such activities,” Mauerberger said.

After Prime Minister Anutin announced the crackdown, photos appeared online and in the Bangkok Post on December 4 showing Anutin standing alongside six other men, including Mauerberger, in a chummy line-up, and sitting at a table eating dinner together.

The photos, taken in 2014, included current Deputy Prime Minister Ekniti Nitithanprapas who is also finance minister, former army chief General Apirat Kongsompong, former senator Upakit Pachairyangkun, and former national police inspector-general Visanu Prasarttongosoth.

“Are they protecting him [Mauerberger]?” opposition parliament member Rangsiman Rome asked. “Is the government serious about cracking down? When will the victims get their money back?” Rangsiman wrote on his Facebook site.

“There was no personal association,” Anutin responded. “I confirm that I was not close to Ben Smith [Mauerberger],” said General Apirat. “I was merely one of the attendees,” Finance Minister Ekniti said.

The mostly Chinese-run scam compounds are exploiting more than 120,000 people from dozens of countries to staff them, mostly in Myanmar and Cambodia, according to international human rights groups and investigators.

Many scam workers were kidnapped and tortured into fooling people online, while others eagerly chose to work for scammers in exchange for relatively high salaries, investigators said.

Scammers operate heavily guarded, multi-story buildings which house “phone farm” centers where they run “sha zhu pan” scams, or “pig butchering”, on a mass scale.

The Chinese slang describes fattening victims with flattery and lies on Tinder, TikTok and other internet venues while using ChatGPT, malware, deepfake forgeries and technological tricks to appear trustworthy.

Victims are lured by get-rich-quick schemes involving Bitcoin, real estate or other faux investments. Others are cooed into falling in love with a sweet-talking stranger who slowly shifts the relationship into draining their assets through deceit or sextortion.

Foreign governments advise travelers to be leery of accepting legitimate-sounding job offers in Thailand because of the danger of being kidnapped and smuggled into Myanmar or Cambodia.

Dead bodies, bombed buildings and destroyed StarLink telecommunications are the latest visible elements of Southeast Asia’s worsening crypto and romance scams that have squeezed billions of dollars from duped Americans and others.

“A US government estimate reported that Americans lost at least $10 billion in 2024 to Southeast Asia-based scam operations, a 66 percent increase over the prior year,” the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) said on November 12.

OFAC warned against “the immense impact of Southeast Asian scam centers on Americans.”

The US Secret Service’s Global Investigative Operations Center and Homeland Security’s Financial Crimes Task Force are also grappling with the cases. Investigators are helped by the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service, Customs and Border Protection’s National Targeting Center, US Marshals and foreign security forces.

Pressure on Thailand to act against scammers increased after at least two Thais recently died in Poipet, a Cambodian border town infamous for alleged illegal scam centers. Their bodies displayed bruises, possibly from torture, after they were unable to scam enough victims, investigators said.

In November, South Korean and Cambodian security officials arrested 17 Koreans working in Cambodian scam centers after a South Korean university student was allegedly tricked into working as a scammer in Cambodia and tortured to death in August, the Washington Times reported on November 28 from Seoul.

China sentenced five extradited Chinese-Myanmar men to death on November 4, including billionaires Bai Suocheng and his son Bai Yingcang, for homicide, fraud and other crimes committed while operating scam centers, casinos and brothels for several years in Myanmar’s Kokang region, near the border with southern China.

Elsewhere, Myanmar’s military has been using drones during the past two months to bomb KK Park, an infamous 500-acre scam complex. KK Park is one of several scam centers in Myanmar along the Moei River, which forms the border with Thailand across from Mae Sot city.

During clashes on December 3, Myanmar’s military reportedly occupied KK Park while battling minority ethnic Karen National Union guerrillas who have been fighting since World War II for an independent or autonomous homeland.

Explosions ripped through the sprawling complex, which included housing, shops and prostitutes to reward successful scammers.

In November, more than 1,500 Indians, Chinese, Pakistanis, Vietnamese, Ethiopians, Kenyans, Filipinos, Ugandans, Nepalis, a South Sudanese, an Egyptian, a Kazakhstani, a Burundian, and a Rwandan, plus others, fled across the Moei River into Thailand to escape the bombardments.

Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite network “disabled over 2,500 Starlink Kits in the vicinity of [Myanmar’s] suspected scam centers,” said SpaceX’s vice president of Starlink business operations, Lauren Dreyer, after Starlink’s internet equipment appeared on KK Park’s rooftops.

The US Justice Department, meanwhile, unsealed an indictment in Brooklyn, New York’s federal court in October “charging Cambodian national Chen Zhi, also known as Vincent, 37, the founder and chairman of Prince Holding Group (PCG) – Prince Group – a multinational business conglomerate based in Cambodia, with wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy for directing Prince Group’s operation of forced-labor scam compounds across Cambodia.”

The Justice Department said, “Individuals, held against their will in the compounds, engaged in cryptocurrency investment fraud schemes known as ‘pig butchering’ scams that stole billions of dollars from victims in the United States and around the world. The defendant is at large.”

The FBI, New York’s Eastern District Attorney’s Office and the Justice Department’s National Security Division seized $15 billion in bitcoin from China-born Chen Zhi’s alleged fraud profits.

On October 26, PHG’s then-chief communications officer Gabriel Tan said, “PHG categorically rejects all claims that it is involved in human trafficking, online scamming, the slave trade, money laundering or any other criminal enterprises.”

Richard S. Ehrlich is a Bangkok-based American foreign correspondent reporting from Asia since 1978, and winner of Columbia University’s Foreign Correspondents’ Award. Excerpts from his two new nonfiction books, “Rituals. Killers. Wars. & Sex. — Tibet, India, Nepal, Laos, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka & New York” and “Apocalyptic Tribes, Smugglers & Freaks” are available here.