By Thai Newsroom Reporters
ONLINE SCAMS based in Cambodia, operated by criminals hiding out in the Southeast Asian country and preying on victims worldwide were believed to account for an estimated 19 billion dollars in illicit income per year, former Cambodian opposition leader Sam Rainsy remarked today (Aug.13).
According to Rainsy’s latest post on his Facebook page, the unidentified Cambodian scammers with whom Cambodian leader Hun Sen and his son/Prime Minister Hun Manet were suspected to be more or less associated stole online as much as 19 billion dollars from the wallets of their unsuspecting victims including those in the neighbouring Thailand and elsewhere on a yearly basis.
Given a sale price of a Lockheed Martin F-16 Fighting Falcon jet at an average of 65 million dollars, such a huge sum of the Cambodian scammers’ ill-gotten money could buy as many as 292 combat aircraft of that type, said the former Cambodian opposition leader who has been living in exile.
His comment posted on social media apparently followed the recent, historic phenomenon in which mini-squadrons of the Thai air force’s F-16 and Saab JAS 39 Gripen fighter jets conducted sorties of joint air strike missions against Cambodian ground forces along a disputed Thai-Cambodian border in northeastern Thai provinces of Ubon Ratchathani, Sisaket and Surin.
Late last month, the Cambodian forces had opened fire with their BM-21 rockets from multiple rocket launchers and other missiles onto Thai territory, killing a dozen Thai civilians and injuring many others, and planted landmines around historical sites on mountainous terrains of Thailand’s Nam Yuen, Kantharalak and Panom Dongrak districts across the border from Cambodia’s Preah Vihear and Oddar Meanchey provinces.
The Thai air force’s air-to-surface bombardments have reportedly wreaked havoc on Cambodian army positions and claimed thousands of fatalities and injuries among the intruding Cambodian troops whilst over a dozen Thai army soldiers were killed and many others wounded in the five-day border clashes.
CAPTIONS:
Top and Front Page: Call centre scammers. Photo: Thai Rath
Insert: Former Cambodian opposition leader Sam Rainsy. Photo: Reuters
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