Thread: Thai police bust Taiwan data fraud ring

Taiwan Today

Taiwan and Thai police authorities announced Nov. 8 a joint bust of a Bangkok-based financial fraud syndicate which was alleged to have engaged in money laundering using personal bank data obtained from Taiwan.
Thai police, in cooperation with Taiwan’s Criminal Investigation Bureau liaison officer in Thailand, Nov. 6 arrested several suspects in a Bangkok apartment and confiscated six notebook computers, 21 cell phones and 44 portable drives.
The police said the main suspect is Chen Xin, a mainland Chinese from Jilin Province. Accomplices include Jin Cheng from Guangdong in the mainland, Mai Weikeng from Macau, and a 42-year-old Taiwanese woman, Cheng Ru-qing.
When the Thai police read the files on the drives, they discovered that just in the latter half of October, the group had swindled victims out of more than 27 million baht, or NT$26 million (US$800,813).
That portable drives containing hundreds of thousands of files of personal data from major Taiwan banks, which had in the past successfully protected their files, has drawn extra police scrutiny to the case. The CIB will investigate how this information was obtained.
The headquarters in Bangkok supplied other scam groups in Thailand with information from bank service centers for use in committing fraud in Taiwan in the guise of law enforcement agencies. It also helped launder money through Thailand. The mainland suspects would recruit members to work in Thailand, and Cheng would then travel back and forth between Taiwan and Thailand providing contacts for money laundering and collecting personal data.
The four suspects denied any involvement in fraud, claiming only to be staying in the apartment, but according to the police investigation the apartment was the group’s base for laundering money from Taiwan into Thailand, and from there to mainland China.
The CIB said with authorities on both sides of the Taiwan Strait working together to combat fraud syndicates, such groups have moved to Thailand and other places. The scam crew apprehended this time is the operating brains behind several fraud groups in the area, responsible for obtaining and distributing individual data and for money laundering.

Keep hearing of cases like this recently.