Thailand’s anti-scam taskforce seizes 3.3 billion baht from fraudsters
The Anti-Online Scam Operations Centre (AOC) has hit back against Thailand’s call-centre fraud tsunami, seizing over 3 billion baht from scammers in the past four months, it announced on Tuesday.
A total of 3.334 billion baht (US$93 million) was confiscated from mule accounts linked to the gangs, in operations between November 1 and February 29.
The news was delivered at the AOC’s first meeting of the year, chaired by Digital Economy and Society Minister Prasert Chanthararuangthong.
Prasert told reporters afterwards that the meeting had focused on speeding up crackdowns on mule accounts and mobile phone numbers used by the gangs, and returning money to the victims.
He said the AOC had got banks to freeze 47% of the targeted 7.097 billion baht in accounts linked with call centre gangs. This was up from 11% in the period from March 2022 to June 2023, when banks froze accounts worth 1.316 billion baht out of the targeted 11.252 billion.
Prasert said the meeting also tasked a subcommittee on legal affairs to consider law amendments that would enable victims to get their money back from frozen accounts sooner.
The AOC is also coordinating with the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) to terminate mobile numbers suspected of being operated by call-centre gangs, he added.
The NBTC is targeting numbers that make over 100 calls a day. It has so far terminated 2.5 million out of 5.07 million suspect numbers after the owners failed to identify themselves by the February 15 deadline.
Only 265 owners of 29,446 mobile numbers making over 100 calls per day identified themselves in the period from December 9 to February 29.
On measures to disrupt scamming operations, Prasert said the AOC 1441 hotline had enabled banks to freeze 57,861 accounts of victims before they were siphoned between November 1 and February 29.
Tipped off by the AOC, the Central Investigation Bureau arrested 51 people behind 1,113 mule accounts used by the scammers.
The AOC meeting also tasked the Bank of Thailand and Anti-Money Laundering Office to come up with measures to prevent those arrested from opening new mule accounts.
A total of 57,056 website addresses were blocked at the AOC’s request in the four months from November, an increase of 12.8 times from the same period a year earlier.
The AOC has coordinated to block 24,352 online gambling sites, up 37.6 times from the same period a year earlier.
