Police have arrested the alleged leader of a Chinese call centre scam gang and 10 others wanted for duping people into investing in gold by claiming a link with the Crown Property Bureau.
The scammers peddled their “Royal Gold” investments from the notorious Kings Romans casino at the Golden Triangle in Laos and bilked their victims out of about 500 million baht, according to the police Technology Crime Suppression Division (TCSD).
Teng June, 32, a Chinese national and alleged leader of the gang, was arrested in Bang Khunthian district of Bangkok, Pol Maj Gen Athip Pongsiwapai, commander of the TCSD, told the media on Thursday.
Nine Thai nationals and one stateless woman were also apprehended in Chiang Rai and Chanthaburi provinces in recent days, he added.
Seized from the alleged gang leader and his accomplices were three luxury cars, over 5 million baht in cash, 30 items of gold ornaments, luxury watches, brand-name bags, computers, mobile phones, SIM cards, bank account books, gold certificates and other items.
All of the suspects were charged with colluding in fraud, putting false information into a computer system and laundering money. They are being held in police custody for legal action.
Earlier, the Crown Property Bureau filed a police complaint that a group of criminals had used its name to open a website under the name “Royal Gold” to promote gold investments.
Between January and May of this year, many people had fallen victim, with damages of about 500 million baht, said Pol Maj Gen Athip.
TCSD investigators found that Mr Teng led the operation, which was headquartered in the compound of the Kings Romans casino.
The Chinese national controlled the operations centre and delegated tasks to other scammers such as arranging bank accounts to receive money transfers from victims and hiring people to open bank accounts. Some scammers were tasked with laundering money.
Pol Col Siriwat Deephor, the deputy TCSD commander, said the scammers created false Facebook accounts using images of good-looking women as their profile photos.
They then approached potential victims and persuaded them to invest in gold via the Royal Gold website, which was set up to look like a stock trading site with graphs showing prices and trading volume. The gang claimed its website invested in gold with links to the Crown Property Bureau in a bid to build credibility.
During the initial stage, investors were receiving returns of 10%. But when the investors sought to withdraw their money, they were unable to get it. They were then asked to transfer more funds to pay taxes service fees. After receiving the money, members of the gang could no longer be contacted, said Pol Col Siriwat.
Pol Col Nethi Wongkularp, superintendent of TSCD Sub-division 2, who led the arrest operation, said the gang used the money swindled from the victims to buy cryptocurrency. They transferred the crypto to digital wallets that they had hired other people to open in order to launder their ill-gotten money.
“The investigation found that those who were hired to open bank accounts and digital wallets mostly live in Chiang Rai. They were hired for 3,000 to 4,000 baht each,” he said.
One of the scammers tasked with finding people to open bank accounts told police that he had been paid 10,000 baht per account. He claimed he had huge debts from gambling at Kings Romans and the Chinese gang leader, who was among the 11 suspects arrested, forced him to work for the scam gang.
Though the alleged gang leader and his accomplices have been arrested, five other scammers remained at large, police say. They are three Chinese men at the executive level of the gang — Qiu Dewu, 45, Qiu Decong, 36, and Zhang Zhihong, 22 — and two other Thais whose names were not disclosed.
