DSI promises to crack 'call-centre gangs'
By The Nation
2011-02-16
As people continue filing complaints of being duped by "call-centre gangs" to unknowingly wire money out via ATMs, a team from the Department of Special Investigation (DSI) held a meeting yesterday to discuss its plan to crack 10 such gangs based in China.
Commenting on the recent case of a Nakhon Si Thammarat resident being duped out of Bt750,000 by someone claiming to be a DSI official, DSI chief Tharit Pengdit said yesterday that the department would investigate this case even though it came under the jurisdiction of the police. He added that the DSI had set up a team led by the chief of the Bureau of Foreign Affairs and Transnational Crimes, Pol Colonel Songsak Raksaksakul, to look into such crimes.
Songsak said at a meeting yesterday that DSI investigators had agreed on a new guideline to initially file charges of crime and public fraud against the call centre suspects, which was punishable to the maximum 20 year imprisonment. The team will also tell Chinese police to look into some 10 callcentre gangs based in the mainland, which reportedly took back Thai nationals to dupe fellow citizens. The team has also asked for the extradition of two alleged gang leaders so they can be prosecuted in Thailand.