Several officials from the Cyber Police Bureau's Information Technology Crime Investigation Division in Thailand held a press conference to announce the details of a major online investment fraud case that was recently cracked.
This case originated on April 2, 2024, when a Thai female teacher was approached by a Facebook user using a high-attractiveness profile picture. After a heated chat, they moved the conversation to LINE. Subsequently, the other party invited the teacher to invest in a Singapore fund through an app starting with "M". Initially, the money invested could be withdrawn, but later it became impossible to withdraw. Within just 16 days, the teacher invested seven times, totaling 1,500,000 Thai Baht, with only two withdrawals, resulting in a total loss of 1,442,100 Thai Baht.
Consequently, the woman reported the case to the police, who through investigation found that the criminal gang's financial route was linked to four Thais, all of whom were specifically receiving money from fraud in illegal accounts. Additionally, the gang had set up cryptocurrency accounts and converted the fraudulent money into USDT through P2P purchases on the BINANCE platform, finally transferring it to a digital wallet under a service provider in Cambodia.
Further investigation revealed that the owner of the aforementioned digital wallet was a 27-year-old Chinese woman named DI WU, with transaction records amounting to 18.4 million USDT, approximately 618 million Thai Baht. Her personal digital wallet account also showed monthly financial movements of 600,000 to 1.3 million Thai Baht. Preliminary findings indicated that her digital wallet was linked to as many as 63 cases, mostly involving "pig-butchering" romance investment scams.
Therefore, the police gathered evidence and successfully applied for an arrest warrant for the Chinese woman. They further discovered that she frequently traveled from Thailand to Cambodia, Laos (Golden Triangle), and Malaysia, and currently resides in a luxurious pool villa in Pattaya, Chonburi Province, where she was arrested.
Later, the police found the passport used to register the cryptocurrency wallet accounts on her phone, along with numerous photos of her lavish lifestyle and drug use in Cambodia. The three countries she frequently visited are Thailand, Malaysia, and China.
Despite this, the woman denied the charges, claiming that her personal documents might have been used by her ex-boyfriend to set up the cryptocurrency accounts, and her frequent trips to neighboring countries were due to her online sale of concert tickets. However, the police do not believe her testimony and are currently intensifying their evidence collection efforts and expanding the investigation to identify more criminals involved in the case.
