The Central Investigation Bureau of the Thai police has announced the seizure of 642 unlicensed simboxes from 11 properties in Chiang Mai. The properties had all been rented by a Thai woman who is believed to be connected to Chinese organized crime. The simboxes are said to have been used for the creation and maintenance of social media accounts by receiving one-time passwords (OTP) used for authentication. These social media accounts were then made available for use by other criminals, who were charged 1 Chinese Yuan (USD0.14) for each OTP handled by the simboxes.
A Thai man was arrested in addition to the Thai woman who had rented the properties. Arrests were also made of five Chinese nationals and eight nationals from Myanmar. In addition to the simboxes, police seized: 1,455 mobile phones; 590,000 SIM cards; 47 SIM card readers; account books for six bank accounts; and various other IT equipment. A photograph of some of the seized simboxes is shown below.
Asian countries like Thailand are leading the way with protecting consumers by tackling the equipment that enables scams as well as asking social media companies to monitor activity on their networks. It is perverse that authorities in other countries have ratcheted up obligations on social media platforms to identify and disable accounts used by scammers, but are doing nothing about the use of social media to advertise the sale of simboxes and SMS blasters! More countries should be licensing the radio equipment that is typically used by scam gangs so unlicensed equipment can be immediately confiscated without needing to go through a laborious process of demonstrating it has been used to enable some other crime.
