The Malaysians were picked up at a shopping mall after victims of the syndicate lodged police reports on the alleged crime.
According to the Thai police’s call-centre scam operations centre head, Maj Gen Surachet Hakpan, the suspects admitted to receiving 2% of all the money withdrawn before depositing the money via a cash deposit machine (CDM) to a bank account in a foreign country.
“Following the arrests, the police seized 104,640 baht (RM13,415), two mobile phones and other documents, including records of bank transactions, from the suspects.
“Under the syndicate’s instructions, the two men travelled to several provinces in Thailand, including Songkla, Phuket, Nakhon Si Thammarat, Surat Thani, Petchaburi and Prachuap Khiri Khan to withdraw the money,” he said today.
In recent months, several Malaysians have been arrested in Thailand for conducting similar scams. Many of them were part of call-centre syndicates.
They included at least 10 Malaysians who were nabbed in separate raids in January on suspicion of cheating people through such operations.
In a recent interview with Bernama, Ridzuan Abdul Aziz, the Malaysian police liaison officer at the embassy in Bangkok, said that the number of Malaysian scammers who had been arrested in Thailand had been increasing, as evidenced by recent raids conducted in Pattaya and Bangkok.
Surachet said the two Malaysians had entered Thailand with the aim of withdrawing the money scammed from the victims.
According to him, the syndicate duped people by claiming to be officers from state agencies and accused them of involvement in drugs before asking to inspect their bank accounts, he said.
He added that the victims were from several provinces in the country.
Victims of the syndicate incurred financial losses amounting to nearly a million baht (RM128,000), he said.