Ten Chinese People Rent a Villa in Chiang Mai, Thailand, for Crypto Scams—Targeting Fellow Countrymen

Thai police raided a scam operation in Saraphi District, Chiang Mai. 67 phones, 7 iPads, 13 laptops—10 Chinese nationals entered on tourist visas, renting a villa for 80k Thai Baht per month.
The scam isn’t complicated: impersonating customer service from insurance companies and courier companies, tricking victims into installing software that steals personal information, then collecting payments via cryptocurrency. The target audience is entirely within China.
Every layer of this case is unsettling.
First layer: The scam gang chose Thailand as their base not because Thai law is lenient—Thailand just amended its laws last year to strengthen crackdowns on crypto crimes—but because the "overseas + crypto" combo makes cross-border law enforcement ten times more difficult for Chinese authorities.
Second layer: All victims are Chinese. The gang didn’t target Thais or Westerners—they focused on their own compatriots—because of language familiarity, psychological vulnerabilities, and the fact that their scam scripts don’t need translation.
Third layer: Using cryptocurrency for payments was meant to "hide the flow of funds," but in reality, every on-chain transfer is public. Police can now trace all transactions simply by obtaining a wallet address—this gang thought they were using "high-tech" money laundering, but in fact, they painted a complete map of the funds for law enforcement.
The saddest part isn’t their arrest—it’s the victim list inside the 67 phones. Behind each number are people duped by cheap tactics like "lost package compensation" or "insurance refund," losing their savings. The biggest enemy in the crypto industry is never regulation—it’s those who use crypto as a shield to scam their own compatriots.