Two Chinese men wanted in separate major fraud cases in China have been arrested and face extradition on charges involving about 2 billion baht in combined damages.
Immigration Bureau commissioner Pol Lt Gen Phakphumpipat Sajjaphan announced the two arrests, made in Chiang Mai and Nointhaburi, and gave details on Tuesday.
Immigration police arrested a 44-year-old man identified only as Changguan in Chiang Mai province at the request of Chinese authorities. He is a accused of duping at least 3,000 people into investing in a fraudulent cryptocurrency scheme in 2013, and stealing about 1.4 billion baht from them. The suspect had fled to Thailand, Pol Lt Gen Phakphumpiat said.
Police investigators tracked him down in Chiang Mai, where he was taken into custody. They seized from him five mobile phones and a fake international driving licence giving his nationality as Taiwanese that he had purchased online, he said,
According to the immigration chief, the suspect was a leading member of a fraud gang and had entered Thailand illegally via a natural border crossing in 2014. He had changed his nationality to avoid arrest and ran a business in Thailand. Police charged him with illegal entry.
In the second case, immigration police arrested Zhong, a Chinese national wanted for public fraud in Wuhan, China. He and accomplices had opened a firm and lured people into investing with them by claiming their company could issue many credit cards, he said.
They also claimed they could unlock credit accounts frozen by a credit bureau, but people had to pay them a service fee first. More than 500 people had fallen victim to the gang, losing the equivalent of 600 million baht.
The suspect had fled to Thailand, entering on a tourist visa. He was caught in Nonthaburi, the bureau chief said.
The two Chinese nationals would be extradited to China to answer charges, he said.
