PATTAYA police raided three luxury houses and rounded up approximately 20 Chinese loan sharks lending money to people in their homeland and also operating online gambling websites, TV Channel 7 said late afternoon today (Oct. 3).
Pol. Lt. Gen. Chatchai Surachetphong, deputy commander of Provincial Police Region 2, and Pol. Col. Nawin Thirawit, superintendent of Pattaya City police station, led a team in raiding the three posh houses at an estate in Soi Chaiyapruek, Banglamung district, Chonburi province, and seized 30 computers, more than a hundred mobile phones, hundreds of SIM cards and a large number of address books.
The suspects were lending money and collecting debts from customers in China via WeChat.
This gang was only running an online gambling website business with the amount of money in circulation under investigation because the suspects were alerted of the raid and unplugged the server which made tracing the details difficult.
Pol. Lt. Gen. Chatchai said Pattaya police had investigated and found out that a group of Chinese people were running a grey business giving underground loans to their customers in China.
The head of the gang had rented a house in this estate at 50,000 baht a month as a base for underground lending while another was rented to run online gambling.
All those who worked there were not allowed to go out with the gang leader getting them food and other necessities as needed.
Police spent more than two months investigating this case before successfully arresting loan shark gang members.
Although the gang leader managed to escape, police are expanding investigation in cracking down on this network.
CAPTION:
Some Chinese loan shark suspects arrested today, Oct. 3, 2024. Photo: TV Channel 7
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