One more Japanese man who is believed to be a former member of the yakuza has been arrested in connection with a busted call centre gang in Thailand, the Immigration Bureau said on Wednesday.
The suspect was identified as Yu Hamaji, 34, who police believe to be the deputy chief of the Japanese gang busted around mid-December in Bang Lamung district of Chon Buri, police said.
This suspect fled along with another Japanese suspect prior to the police raids in the province last month.
He was detained at Don Mueang Airport on Sunday while attempting to return to Japan, police said.
At the request of the Japanese embassy in Thailand for cooperation in tracking down the members of the call centre gang, which has tricked a large group of Japanese retirees in Japan out of more than 300 million baht in total, immigration police began investigating the case, which led to raids on two luxurious pool villas in Chon Buri.
At the time, five suspects were arrested.
Seized by police for inspection was the information of 37 victims, as well as scripts used to trick people on calls and make them think they were speaking to Japanese state officials handling healthcare welfare and billing, along with a list of more than 50,000 people who were the gang's targets.
The gang would tell Japanese retirees they had a huge amount of healthcare reimbursements to collect and persuade them to transfer sums of money starting from 500,000 yen (110,000 baht) to mule accounts.
This gang was found to have caused daily damages of around 24 million yen (around 5 million baht).
