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Thais Busted Trying Phuket Con Trick in Vietnam

Tuesday, July 26, 2011
PHUKET: Police have busted a call centre gang preying on Thais from Vietnam. Eleven members of the gang were flown back to Bangkok last night from Ho Chi Minh City, Phuketwan can reveal.

It is understood the Thai-Viet gang imitated similar call-centre extortionists caught operating in Phuket and other Thai holiday destinations.

While those gangs were from Taiwan or China and preyed on Taiwanese or Chinese, the Thai gang allegedly extorted 15 million baht from Thai victims in the month that it was in operation.

A spokesperson for Thailand's Central Investigation Bureau said that five men and six women who were members of the gang arrived back in Bangkok at 7.30pm last night and will stand trial in Thailand.

With the help of Vietnamese officials and police, Thai officers raided a large house in the Vietnamese capital this month and arrested Thais and Vietnamese who were members of the gang.

All 11 Thais told police roughly the same story. A woman named Nang asked them if they would like to travel and they had all expenses paid.

In Ho Chi Minh City, a Viet named Bung took them to a large house where they were trained by two other men, Ahmung and Ahpim.

The 11 were given a list of Thai names and numbers to call. The men would pretend to be police or members of the Department of Special Investigations, the women would call and say they represented a government bank.

Working to a prepared script, the callers enticed victims to pay five baht for every 100 baht advanced as part of a ''special offer.''

Thai police at the Central Investigation Bureau were eventually alerted and traced the calls to Vietnam. A similar gang on Phuket involving Taiwanese in extortion in Taiwan was busted in 2009.

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