Thai Police Raid Luxury Pattaya House Used as Scam Base: 10 Arrested, Including 8 Chinese Nationals, With About 350 Million Baht in Transfers Traced
Thai police raided a luxury two-storey house with a swimming pool in Nongprue, Bang Lamung district, Chonburi province, on the afternoon of November 9 under a Pattaya Provincial Court warrant, dismantling a cross-border romance-and-investment scam base. Ten people were detained, eight Chinese nationals and two Myanmar nationals, and officers seized two laptops, 32 mobile phones and more than 178 SIM cards. The joint operation was led by Immigration Bureau Commissioner Pol. Lt. Gen. Noppasil Phulsawat and Region 2 Police Commissioner Pol. Lt. Gen. Wasan Techakreusame.
Police said the group ran a 'hybrid scam': members first built romantic relationships with Chinese victims, many of them widows, on platforms such as Douyin, then lured them into fake Chinese stock-investment apps. Evidence seized included chat records impersonating Chinese military generals, romance scripts, and records of roughly 700 transfers totalling about 350 million baht into a Chinese bank account. Police put the number of victims at about 100, all Chinese citizens, with losses of about 2 million baht on the morning of November 9 alone.
The house had been rented for 140,000 baht a month and used as a base for about six months. All eight Chinese detainees had entered Thailand illegally, seven through the Cambodian border in Sa Kaeo and one through the Lao border in Ubon Ratchathani; four of them were wanted in China in fraud, assault and call-centre scam cases. The two Myanmar nationals worked as cleaners at the house, and one of them had also entered illegally.
Police said the alleged ringleader, a 37-year-old Chinese man surnamed Guan, was not among those arrested and is being hunted. The seized devices will be examined and the detainees' identities checked against Thai and Chinese warrant records.
(Source: Thai Immigration Bureau)
Source: Thai Immigration Bureau
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：泰国芭堤雅夜景（资料图）。PattayaPatrol 摄，CC BY-SA 4.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / Photo: Pattaya, Thailand, at night (file photo). By PattayaPatrol, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
