A Chinese man and three Thais have been arrested for allegedly skimming the credit card data of 1,200 Chinese visitors to their shops in Bangkok and Chiang Mai and stealing 30-million-baht from them using forged credit cards.
Police said the Chinese man and three Thai suspects were arrested last week after the Chinese embassy sought legal action against criminals who had misused stolen credit card data from 1,200 Chinese tourists in Thailand. They were part of a criminal network operating in China, Thailand and the United States.
Police said the gang and the data used to forge fake cards that were used to buy luxury products and withdraw cash. Money raised from the crime was shared among gang members.
Total losses were around 6 million yuan, about 30 million baht.
The Chinese victims made credit card purchases at three dried fruit and souvenir shops in Bangkok and Chiang Mai. The shops were the CM Yummy Fruit Dried Shop and the Fruit Dried Shop in Chiang Mai and the Yaowarat Fruit Dry Shop in Bangkok.
The three shops were registered to the Chinese suspect, Chao Ji, 42, and the three Thai suspects, Salinee, 33, Jittra, 32, and Theeraphat, 32.
On July 22, police searched the shops and the suspects' three houses. They found 11 computer keyboards equipped with card skimmers, three electronic data capture (EDC) devices, five computers and 18 surveillance cameras. The suspects were arrested.
Shop staff told police they were ordered to run clients’ UnionPay cards twice, once through a skimmer-equipped keyboard and the other with EDC readers. If clients became suspicious, asking why the cards were run twice, employees would tell them it was necessary to give them a 32% discount.
The stolen data was sent via the LINE chat app to accomplices in the US, along with the PINs recorded by the many surveillance cameras aimed at clients when they entered the codes. The data was used to forge cards in the US.
