The Thai government recently received 119 suspects of telecommunications fraud deported from Poipet City, Banteay Meanchey Province, Cambodia. Among them, 112 were sent to Yala County, Sa Kaeo Province for screening under the National Referral Mechanism (NRM), while the other 7, who were involved in warrants, were taken to the Kule Police Station in Yala County for interrogation.
Damrong Phiphan, the Director of Thailand's Cyber Crime Investigation Bureau, personally supervised the NRM screening and conducted interrogations on some suspects. He revealed that among the deported individuals, 7 were wanted, and another 10 had been previously accused of involvement in fraud through the Thai police's online reporting system.
According to the interrogation results, some suspects admitted that they voluntarily went to Cambodia to engage in telecommunications fraud but began to feel fear and unease after working for a while, although they were not subjected to violence. One suspect provided key testimony, stating that he was originally recruited as an administrator for an online gambling website, only to discover upon arrival that the actual job was to participate in fraud.
Damrong further pointed out that this witness was arranged to impersonate an official from the Thai Ministry of Finance's Accounting Division, using artificial intelligence (AI) technology to extract personal information from victims (mainly retired civil servants) and make fraudulent calls. The fraud tactics included inducing victims to install remote control apps on their phones, allowing the criminal group to take complete control of the victims' devices and easily steal their assets. The suspect also revealed that the fraud group offered a fixed salary of 20,000 Thai Baht per month, with additional commissions based on the amount of money defrauded, to motivate the fraudsters to improve their "performance."
Regarding the progress of the investigation into the deported individuals' mobile phones, Damrong stated that it is still ongoing. However, it is confirmed that these individuals had mobile phones during their time in Poipet and had changed their SIM cards to make domestic calls in Thailand. The police have information that several suspects had called back to Thailand and sent money to their families, indicating that they might have obtained illegal profits from their fraudulent activities.
Currently, the Thai police are conducting an in-depth investigation into the operation mode of this fraud group and plan to further crack down on related criminal networks to prevent more Thai citizens from falling into similar scams.
