Govt seeks ways to defuse nominee accounts as online scams skyrocket
The Finance Ministry’s Fiscal Policy Office has been tasked with solving the problem of scammers using nominees to open bank accounts and electronic wallets to escape the long arm of the law.
One proposed solution is to allow financial institutions to freeze accounts after receiving complaints from victims, to prevent damage from escalating, said finance permanent secretary Krisada Chinavicharana on Monday.
He said increasing reports of online scams mostly involved tricking victims into clicking links or inputting their personal info, enabling scammers to take remote control of the victim’s mobile device.
The criminals then siphon the money out of the victims’ accounts into one of their nominee accounts, often when the victims are charging their devices and so don’t notice. This has also led to a widespread misconception that cheap charging cables are responsible for money being siphoned from mobile phones.
Krisada said that allowing financial institutions to take control of nominee accounts required changes to several laws and thus needed thorough study.
“In principle, once the money is transferred to an account, the owner of the destination account also legally owns the money. We are looking into ways of freezing only the transferred amount instead of the whole account,” he added.
Krisada also advised people to keep most of their money in a separate offline account for safety, using their online account only for settling and receiving daily bills.
“This second account should have only a small amount of money,” he said.
In the six months between March and October last year, over 114,000 online scams stole a total of 22 billion baht, according to the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society.
The ministry responded by proposing a draft Royal Decree on Cybercrime Prevention and Suppression.
The draft stipulates punishment of up to three years in jail and/or a maximum fine of 300,000 baht for those who open an account, electronic card, or electronic wallet for purposes other than personal use, or who let others use their SIM card for any illegal purpose. Meanwhile the penalty for asking others to open an account or to use their account, electronic card, electronic wallet, or SIM card for illegal purposes would be 2-5 years in jail and/or a fine of 200,000 to 500,000 baht.
The draft was approved in principle by the Cabinet last week.
