Thai police have arrested 327 suspects and 55 recruiters and ringleaders linked to mule-account networks as a part of a nationwide crackdown and a wide-ranging effort to handle monetary crime in Thailand.
The arrests had been a part of the nationwide “Lightning Strike: Shaking Mule Accounts Throughout the Nation” operation, carried out between November 18 and 26, 2025. The operation sought to dismantle prison networks, focusing on account holders who lease out or promote their financial institution accounts for prison use, in addition to the recruiters who arrange them, The Nation Thailand reported.
Police Lieutenant Common Jirabhop Phuridej, Assistant Nationwide Police Chief and Deputy Director of the Know-how Crime Suppression Centre stated that as of November 24, the operation had resulted within the arrest of 339 suspects court docket warrants, with 209 confessing to opening mule accounts. Additional investigation traced 25 extra suspects.
Officers additionally uncovered 87 people concerned in “real-time” rip-off operations, 58 of whom admitted being paid to open mule accounts. The probe expanded to determine 30 extra key operators.
Rising scale of economic crime
The crackdown additionally uncovered transnational prison exercise, highlighting the worldwide scale of a few of these networks.
15 international nations who allegedly ran an internet site scamming Turkish victims by means of pretend cryptocurrency investments had been arrested, alongside a Chinese language nationwide believed to be liable for managing money withdrawals for a call-center prison community.
Authorities additionally carried out raids to close down SIM field operations, resulting in the confiscation of 12 gadgets and the arrest of two suspects. A SIM field is a tool that may maintain many SIM playing cards and is usually used to reroute telephone calls and messages in bulk. When used illegally, it’s generally linked to phone scams or spam.
The operation additionally dismantled a so-called “mule-farm” the place folks had been paid to scan their faces and open digital TrueMoney accounts for rip-off operations.
Police additionally arrested a feminine call-center employee alleged of deceiving a sufferer into handing over THB 5.8 million (US$182,000) in money and 10 baht-weight of gold on her doorstep, the Bangkok Put up reported. As well as, a hybrid rip-off community combining romance and funding fraud was damaged up, with over 12 suspects detained.
These raids are a part of a nationwide effort to curb monetary crime, which has turn into more and more prevalent in Thailand. Between November 01, 2023, and June 27, 2025, the Anti On-line Rip-off Operation Centre (AOC) obtained greater than 1.18 million instances of on-line scams.
The unit, supervised by the Ministry of Digital Economic system and Society, was launched in November 2023 to assist deal with the rise of on-line scams, serving as the first company for reporting, stopping, and managing instances of on-line scams. Day by day losses from scam-related crimes quantity to an estimated THB 60-70 million (US$1.9-2.2 million), in accordance to The Nation Thailand.
New guidelines tackling cash laundering
These operations come along with a brand new set of laws aimed toward blocking the illicit use of nominee shareholders and cash mule accounts by prison enterprises. Thailand’s Division of Enterprise Improvement (DBD) introduced final week 5 key measures that tighten controls on the level of enterprise registration and which contain enhanced knowledge integration and stricter private verification.
The measures embrace:
- Increasing the DBD’s vetting of high-risk people, with 40 suspicious instances already recognized from a listing of 90,000 names offered by collaborating companies;
- Granted the DBD entry to the Ministry of Finance’s database of 13.4 million State Welfare Cardholders, and requiring people named on firm’s registration varieties to personally seem and supply proof of their monetary standing;
- Establishing new methods to flag high-risk behaviors, corresponding to people registering or directing a number of corporations from the identical workplace deal with, and requesting new registrants to look in individual;
- Requiring the agent and the individual certifying the signature to look in-person and signal earlier than a DBD official to confirm their identities; and
- Suspending the rights of the registered system customers who fail to adjust to the brand new necessities, with offenders dealing with prosecution and license revocation.
The measures might be submitted for dialogue on the Nationwide Committee on Overseas Enterprise Regulation Enforcement (NCFBLE) on December 09, and are set to be absolutely applied by the tip of 2025.
They observe a two-month investigation which resulted in 72 nominee instances being forwarded for prosecution. An additional 448 giant companies, together with quite a few real-estate corporations with substantial international funding, are presently present process in-depth investigation.
In parallel, Thailand has additionally restricted people from holding a most of 5 SIM playing cards throughout all cell operators to forestall scammers from buying quite a few untraceable numbers.
Moreover, Financial institution of Thailand (BoT) has been tasked with introducing extra safeguards in opposition to mule accounts, with a concentrate on repeat offenders. These measures embrace setting limits on the variety of accounts a person can maintain and probably permitting solely a single account for livelihood functions for these beforehand linked to mule exercise. Moreover, any one who commits a repeat offense will face the speedy closure of all their financial institution accounts.
Banking disruption
These initiatives observe widespread account freezes in September after authorities widened investigations into transfers linked to mule accounts in a bid to hint and return stolen funds. These mass freezes focused accounts suspected of receiving cash from scammers, however within the course of, additionally affected harmless account holders, fueling concern among the many public. On Reddit, some customers stated they’d begun retaining additional cash at house for concern of getting their accounts frozen and being unable to pay their payments.
The freezes triggered additional disruption throughout the banking sector. In some instances, banks didn’t replace end-of-day transactions, leaving accounts displaying outdated balances. In others, the frozen quantity exceeded the precise steadiness, leading to damaging figures being displayed.
Daranee Saeju, BoT Assistant Governor in control of shopper safety, stated that authorities had been engaged on enhance the freezing and unfreezing procedures so scammers had been handled successfully whereas guaranteeing harmless clients weren’t affected. Companies may also velocity up the discharge of funds for people discovered to be uninvolved in scams, she added.
In accordance to the Nation Thailand, roughly 10,000 accounts had been suspended in whole. Nonetheless, a overview of over 100 instances on September 14 confirmed that solely 11, or 10%, of these accounts had been really unblocked, as most had been discovered to have a direct hyperlink to the fraudulent cash path.
Southeast Asia: a hub for on-line scams
Southeast Asia has turn into a hotspot for large-scale on-line scams, with transnational prison networks working “rip-off factories” that use romance and funding schemes to defraud victims on an industrial scale. These conducting the scams are sometimes trafficked international nationals, trapped and compelled to hold out on-line fraud below risk of torture.
These rip-off operations are primarily present in Cambodia and in Myanmar’s border areas alongside Thailand. In response, the Thai authorities lower off in February 2025 electrical energy and oil provides to 5 key border areas in Myanmar, the place call-center gangs are believed to function.
Efforts have additionally intensified to limit Web entry to Cambodian border areas suspected of housing rip-off operations, with cell community operators in Thailand instructed to decrease the peak of cell towers alongside the border to forestall alerts from reaching Cambodia.
Featured picture: Edited by Fintech Information Singapore, based mostly on photos by wirestock and kobackpacko through Freepik
