THE Central Investigation Bureau police kicked off “Operation Crypto Phantom” by raiding eight shops in Phuket, Chonburi and Bangkok that were secretly providing digital asset exchange services without going through the authorised exchange centre in order to dodge taxes with this leading to cash flowing to various illegal businesses, Naewna newspaper said today (Apr. 24).
Investigation of the 3rd Division of the Technology Crime Suppression Division had discovered that shops were providing digital asset exchange services, such as exchanging USDT, a stablecoin backed by the United States dollar and issued by Tether.
Of the eight shops, four are located in Phuket, one in Chonburi and three in Bangkok with five suspects arrested.
Seized were computers, mobile phones, bank accounts, hardware wallets and a large number of transaction documents.
Financial trail shows that there were more than 1,000 transactions linked to this criminal network with circulation reaching over 425 million USDT, or over 14 billion baht.
Shops in this network set up a “crypto exchange table” for foreign customers to exchange Thai baht to cryptocurrencies and USDT back to Thai baht without going through the authorised exchange system with this leading to laundering of foreign currencies and the cash also distributed to criminal gangs such as call centre scammers and other illegal businesses.
The deals were either agreed upon with a handshake or a meeting was arranged outside the shop to exchange cryptocurrencies for cash.
This is a high-risk undertaking in terms of life, property and transactions and those carrying them out, either ordinary individuals or even licensed foreign exchange operators, and their clients are breaking several laws.
One is the Royal Decree on Digital Assets Business B.E. 2561 (2018), under which offenders face a jail term of of two to five years and a fine of 200,000-500,000 baht, and a fine of no more than 10,000 baht per day for the duration of the violation.
CAPTIONS:
Top: A smartphone with a Tether logo on it. Photo: Reuters/Dado Ruvic/Illustration and published by Yahoo!News
Front Page: Tether ‘s logo. Photo: Nikhilesh De/CoinDesk and published by Yahoo!News
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