BANGKOK – Police apprehended a wealthy Chinese man who lived a luxurious lifestyle under the guise of a Thai national and conspired with his wife to marry the Thai man for fraudulent business operations.
On April 29, Police Lieutenant General Jirabhop Bhuridej, the Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) Commissioner, and Pol. Maj. Gen. Atip Phongsiwapai, Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Thai Police, led a news conference on the arrest of Mr. Chen Yin Lai, aged 32 years old, of Chinese nationality, and Mr. Anant, 32 years old, accused of an arrest warrant from the Criminal Court, charged with conspiring to defraud the public by dishonestly or deceitfully importing false information into the computer system and conspiring with two or more people to commit money laundering.
Officers seized 11 million baht in cash, two computer devices, seven telephones, eight bank passbooks, thirteen ATM cards and credit cards, five cars, one cash counter, and other valuables totaling more than 42 million baht.
Pol. Lt. Gen. Jiraphop stated that the officers have been conducting investigations since November 2023, when they detained a contact centre gang and five suspects for creating a phoney CIB website to deceive past victims.
According to the latest inquiry, Mr. Chen was in charge of maintaining the digital wallets used in the crimes and laundering digital money into currency, both baht and yuan, to finance the spending of numerous contact centre gangs.
Mr. Chen’s cell phone had many applications belonging to call centre gang members, with a total circulating amount of more than 70 billion baht, or 1.9 billion USD, of digital wallets.
These scammers threatened victims with legal action, duped them into investing in digital money stocks, and pretended to be either electric utility officials or Comptroller General’s Department officials, all in an attempt to trick the victim into downloading an application that allowed them to steal money from their accounts. They even purported to be bank officials, deceiving victims into transferring funds to another account.
The police also discovered that Mr. Chen exploited the name of another Thai national to buy and keep assets such as cash, houses, and luxury cars, as well as the 5-year “Elite Card” package.
It was found that he also had his wife register for marriage with the Thai man who is the father of Mr. Chen’s three children, so that his children could receive Thai nationality as well.
Mr. Anant denies the charges. He just claimed that he has known Mr. Chen for approximately ten years and has granted him access to his own bank account and cryptocurrency exchange platform. However, he did not engage in any type of dishonesty.
