Police from Thailand’s Cyber Crime Investigation Bureau detained two Chinese nationals on April 28 and seized an SMS blaster with an integrated battery from the front passenger footwell of their car. The two men were named as Jiang Zhaosu and Chen Min. They were stopped while driving a car through the area of Bangkok that is home to Dao Khanong market, a popular location for locals wanting clothes or street food.
The interference caused by this SMS blaster had first been identified by mobile networks on March 11. The pattern of the disruption showed that the device was being transported around densely populated areas of Bangkok. No mention has been made of the messages sent by the device, though the police reiterated previous warnings about SMS messages containing links to websites that impersonate legitimate organizations.
The arrested men claimed not to know they were breaking the law before refusing to answer any questions. They have been charged with violating the law prohibiting the possession of an unlicensed radio communications device and the law prohibiting the operation of an unlicensed radio communication station. Thailand’s laws are more advanced than those of other countries because they have wisely chosen to make the possession, manufacture and import of rogue base stations a crime as well as banning their use.
The details of this case have been added to the SMS blaster map on our Global Fraud Dashboard. We have the most comprehensive and up-to-date map of all credible reports of rogue base stations that been used to send SMS messages because we run AI-powered multilingual searches of all news relating to SMS blasters on a daily basis. Many self-proclaimed experts copy our work without attribution.
The police shared photographs of the equipment they seized and the men they arrested; they have been reproduced below. The arrest was announced on the official Facebook page of the Cyber Crime Investigation Bureau; that post is here.
