Crime

Foreign Passport Theft Big Business in Thailand

German tourist Falko Tillwich, left, holds his passport near his German friend, who didn’t want to give his name as they try to contact a car rental on Pathong Beach in Phuket province, southern Thailand.

PHUKET – When a German tourist Falko Tillwich refused to surrender his passport as collateral at a car rental stand along a popular beach in the Thai resort city of Phuket, the woman behind the counter pulled out a bag full of passport books to prove he could trust her.

Luigi Maraldi of Italy whose stolen passport was used by a passenger boarding a missing Malaysia Airlines plane, talks to a reporter at Phuket police station in Phuket

But Falko Tillwich, was insistent. “I said absolutely not … no way,” he recalled, and later handed over his driver’s license instead.

Tillwich’s concern: losing vital travel documents, or worse — having them stolen by criminal syndicates that are exploiting lax law enforcement and corrupt police here to support a global network of human smugglers, fugitives and sometimes, terrorists.

Those worries were heightened this week after investigations into Malaysian jetliner that went missing March 8 with 239 people aboard revealed two Iranian citizens had boarded the flight with passports stolen from tourists in Thailand.

Investigators say it was unlikely the two men had links to terrorism and appeared to be illegal migrants trying to get to Europe. However, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said Saturday authorities were re-examining the list of crew and passengers after deciding the plane had deliberately changed course after taking off from Kuala Lumpur on the way to Beijing.

Passport theft is “a very big and critical problem in Thailand,” said police Maj. Gen. Apichart Suribunya, who serves as Thailand’s Interpol director. “It is a problem that Interpol, the United Nations and the international community have been trying to solve for years.”

So far, with limited success.

Thailand’s sapphire blue waters, wildlife parks, delicious cuisine and raunchy red light districts have attracted tourists for decades. Last year alone, 22 million foreign visitors made the trip. That means “there are more passports to steal in Thailand than other countries in the region,” said Clive Williams, a counter terrorism expert at Australia’s Macquarie University.

Phuket is one of Thailand’s tourism honeypots. Tourists flock here in droves each year for its sun, sand and laid back ambiance. And some, like Italian Luigi Maraldi, lose their passports along the way.

Maraldi hired a hired a motorbike on Phuket last year. When he returned to the shop to retrieve his passport, he was told it had been given away to someone who looked like him.

His passport, along with another stolen in Phuket two years earlier, was used to board the ill-fated flight undetected, revealing startling shortcomings in the security of international travel.

Interpol says it maintains a global database of 40 million lost or stolen travel documents, but only a handful of countries actually check it before allowing passengers aboard flights. Malaysia and Thailand are not among them.

Apichart said accessing the database is not complicated, but Thai authorities use it only when travellers are deemed suspicious. It can also be time-consuming, he said, and the government has been keen to facilitate the lucrative tourism industry and ensure immigration lines aren’t clogged.

“This is something we have to rethink,” Apichart said.

The global intelligence company Stratfor said that passport fraud is common among human traffickers, drug smugglers, arms merchants, money launderers, fugitives and pedophiles — many of whom end up in Thailand. “Only a very small percentage,” of those involved in the underground trade have terror links, Stratfor said.

Nevertheless, the threat remains a concern. After the Sept. 11 attacks, Thailand — under pressure from Western governments — vowed to crack down.

In 2004, police arrested a Bangladeshi who allegedly supplied forged passports to al-Qaida-linked terrorists, including the mastermind of the 2002 Bali attacks. In 2010, authorities nabbed Pakistani Muhammad Butt, who police believe provided false passports to suspects in the Madrid train bombings.

Parknejed Seyed Ramin is said to be part of an Iranian forgery ring

Two years later, Thai officers arrested Parknejed Seyed Ramin for alleged involvement in a passport racket that was thought to have aided suspects in a bomb plot discovered in Bangkok on Valentine’s Day the same year. Police said Ramin’s gang had been running a lucrative, 5-year-old forgery business worth millions of dollars.

Governments like the United States have fought back by embedding digital chips inside passports that contain a photo of the passport holder and information about the owner. Stratfor said that has made it tougher to alter photos, but chips can still be hacked.

In Thailand, passport forgers now use advanced technology, and their clients can evade capture by selling them to lookalikes who resemble the owners.

A senior Thai intelligence official, who has spent years hunting down passport theft rings, said investigators are currently tracking about 10 major syndicates in Thailand.

Most were run by nationals from Pakistan, India, Iran or Central Asia he said, for clients that are mostly illegal migrants. The fact that travel documents are often stolen or forged in one country and used in another, though, “makes it hard for the governments to follow and arrest them,” he said.

In Phuket this week, police called meetings with dozens of owners of motorbike rental shops and told them to take copies of passports instead of the originals. It was unclear, though, how or whether they would enforce it. – By Thanyarat Doksone

Crime

Police Officer Being Ordained at Temple Arrested for Running Scam Call Center

Police in Northern Thailand have arrested a fellow officer as he was being ordained at a temple in Ngao district of neighbouring Lampang province.

Pol Lt Col Bandit Khonkan chief inspector from the Hang Dong police station was disrobed and taken to the Chang Puak station in Chiang Mai. He was arrested on charges of running a call centre scam gang in Chiang Mai Province.

According to Thai Media Chiang Mai Provincial Police Region 5 obtained an arrest warrant for Pol Lt Col Bandit on Friday from the Chiang Mai Provincial Court for procuring illegal telecom equipment, setting up a station and using public airwaves to run a telecommunications business without permission.

Pol Lt Col Bandit reportedly told investigators that he was not the ringleader and was only a member of the gang with Chinese partners.

His arrest followed the apprehension of his 26-year-old daughter, Miss Wanuchapond, 26, and three others during raids at three housing projects in Chiang Mai on Friday, Pol Maj Gen Weerachon Boontawee, deputy chief of Provincial Police Region 5 told Thai media.

During the raids police police discovered around 12 GSM gateways, or SIM boxes, which are devices used for converting cellular networks into mobile phone numbers used domestically.

The chief inspectors daughter Miss Wanuchapond told the arresting officers that she was paid 8,000 baht a month at each of the three locations for renting thr rooms and monitoring devices.

She claimed she had no idea what the devices were and accepted the job because the pay was attractive.

Police investigators working with telecom regulators used a special tracking device to monitor the gang’s communications and learned that its base was in Myanmar opposite Mae Sai district of Chiang Rai.

The call center gang used the GSM gateways to make calls over the internet to scam people in Thailand out of million of baht.

The GSM gateways transmitting signals via SIM boxes to convert them into domestic phone numbers, duping victims into thinking they were being called from Thai government agencies.

Pol Maj Gen Weerachon said that each SIM box held 32 SIM cards, with a capacity of up to 300,000 calls a month. The seized devices had made fraudulent calls over 3.6 million times.

He said the their investigation is ongoing and they are working to track down the remaining conspirators, including Chinese and other Thai suspects.

Authorities are still deciding whether Pol Lt Col Bandit will be dismissed from the force, he said, adding that so far, no other officers are known to have been involved.

Police in Chiang Rai Launch Crackdown on Cyber Criminals in Golden Triangle

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Settha Thavisin has authorized the establishment of an emergency cyber center operated by the Royal Thai Police to combat transnational crimes committed by call center gangs along the Thai border in Chiang Rai province.

On July 19, Prime Minister Settha Thavisin directed the Center to combat information technology crimes. The Royal Thai Police (Royal Thai Police) will crack down on call center gangs in Myanmar, Laos, and along the border.

His directive comes as call center gangs ratchet up their scams to defraud people of their money, causing concern among Thais and jeopardizing the country’s economic and social stability.

Related Police News:

Machete Wielding Man Shot an Killed by Police in Chiang Rai

https://www.chiangraitimes.com/chiangrai-news/machete-wielding-man-shot-an-killed-by-police-in-chiang-rai/

Crime

Thai Immigration Police Arrest Colombian Tourists Over Home Invasions

Immigration police officers have arrested four Colombian nationals in connection with a series of home burglaries at luxury housing complexes in the Bangkok metropolitan area and Chiang Buri Province.

Pol Maj Gen Panthana Nuchanart, deputy commissioner of the Immigration Bureau, told a press briefing that three of the suspects were apprehended in Nonthaburi Province and the fourth in South Pattaya, Chon Buri Province.

According to the Bangkok Post, the Colombians were charged with stealing conspiracy and seized around 3 million baht (US$82,500.00).

According to Pol Maj Gen Panthana, the criminals rode motorcycles through housing estates, scoping out the properties and waiting for the owners to depart before committing their crimes.

He stated that all four of the accused denied any involvement in the home break-ins, but the arresting squad discovered evidence that implicated them.

Police called to home invasion

Meanwhile, police were dispatched to a luxury housing development in Tambon Nong Prue, Chonburi Province, after a Chinese man was attacked during a house invasion.

When they arrived, they discovered the house owner, Mr. Qian Peng Yi, visibly scared and with marks from being tied up with a cable. He informed police that three Chinese males broke into his home at 9 p.m., one of whom brandished a gun at him and directed him to his bedroom.

They bound his hands and feet, gagged him with fabric, taped his head, and forced him into the bed. The intruders then attempted to compel him into transferring 10 million baht in cryptocurrencies to them, endangering the life of his 33-year-old cousin who was in a second-floor bedroom.

While they scoured the house in search of riches, Mr. Peng Yi managed to flee and hide; he subsequently observed them leave with his cousin. Officials investigated the property and analyzed security camera footage from the incident and surrounding areas.

Around 9 p.m., a 30-year-old van driver came at the Bang Lamung police station after being contacted by an agency to carry Chinese customers from Pattaya to Suvarnabhumi Airport.

The driver informed authorities that he was supposed to pick them up at a motel about a kilometer from the Chinese businessman’s home. He then drove them to Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi airport, arriving at 1 a.m. and receiving 1,800 baht.

The driver took a snapshot of the group smoking at the airport gate and identified one of them as the victim’s cousin. Police suspected coordination between her and the three suspects in her cousin’s heist, who all departed Thailand on the same aircraft.

Other Bangkok News:

Police in Bangkok Discover Six Vietnamese Tourists Dead in 5 Star Hotel

Police in Bangkok Discover Six Vietnamese Tourists Dead in 5 Star Hotel

Crime

Son of Thailand’s Leading Legal Scholar on Corruption Arrested for Running Online Gambling Network

The son of a former senator and leading economist and expert on corruption and gambling in Thailand has been arrested for on charges of running an online gambling network and its payment system.

Police from Thailand’s Technology Crime Suppression Division (TCSD) have confiscated assets worth more than (US$ 11.1 million) 400 million baht.

Narote Piriyarangsan, 33, was arrested following crackdowns in three sites around the city, according to Pol Maj Gen Athip Pongsiwapai, commander of the police Technology Crime Suppression Division (TCSD).

Mr Narote’s father, Sangsit Piriyarangsan, is an economist who has written articles and books about corruption and gambling. He was one of the appointed senators that were investigating the government’s intention to legalize casino gaming before their terms expired.

Police also detained 39-year-old Narayut Narakaew, the owner of the gambling website 69pgslot.com. The Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for the couple for operating an internet gambling service and money laundering.

According to the Bangkok Post, police seized two desktop computers, one laptop computer, 14 mobile phones, 21 bank passbooks, 53 ATM cards, and four high-end cars — a Ferrari 926 GTS, an Aston Martin, a Lexus, and a Subaru — totaling more than 400 million baht.

Police launched the inquiry after discovering the online gambling site, which accepted funds via an automatic deposit-withdrawal system through bank accounts and deposits in the AskMePay system. Players scanned the VPay QR code as well as the QR codes for Heng Online 888 or Heng Pay Company.

Police also discovered that payments received via QR code scans were transferred to the account of Heng Pay Co and then to the gambling website’s mule accounts using AskMePay, which did not use banks’ face recognition scanning. An inquiry indicated a monthly turnover of approximately 5 billion baht.

According to investigators, the website has been up and running for around four years, with the payment mechanism in use for roughly eight months.

According to Pol Maj Gen Athip, Mr Narote owns the gaming website’s payment systems and is the director of Heng Pay Co. After gathering evidence, authorities requested arrest warrants for 14 people.

Thailand does not allow almost any kind of gaming. Even though the law doesn’t say anything specific about online gaming, it is still considered gambling. The country has pretty strict rules about gambling. Thai punters can bet on the national lottery and horse races, but they can’t bet on any other types of games.

But it’s not a secret that there is a huge illegal gaming business in Thailand, even though it’s illegal.

The illegal casinos, online betting shops, underground lotteries, and pop-up bookies that take bets on everything from cockfights to Muay Thai make a shadow economy that is worth billions of dollars every year.