A Chinese suspected fraudster was arrested with thousands of ATM cards allegedly used in cybercrime in Thailand.

Hu Haojie, 35, was detained while withdrawing money from a Bangkok Bank branch in Chiang Rai province.

Police were on patrol at around midnight on October 23 when they reportedly noticed the Hu 'acting suspiciously'. Upon being approached, he was said to have tried to flee but was immediately caught.

Officers arrested him with multiple ATM cards and bank transfer slips. Cops swept through his hotel room and discovered more evidence, including 2,057 ATM cards, 537,900 baht (12,370 GBP) in cash, and various documents containing account and card numbers.

Hu allegedly admitted he withdrew and transferred funds for a Chinese employer who gave him orders through the Lark application.

He was charged with 'unlawfully possessing other people's electronic cards with the intent to use them, which could potentially cause harm to others or the public' and 'as an intermediary to facilitate the buying, selling, renting, or loaning of electronic cards for use in committing offences related to technological crime'.

In a separate operation, police arrested Thai man Rungroj, 35, who was found with 34 bankbooks, 38 ATM cards, and 39 SIM cards.

The operation was launched after authorities were tipped off about a shipment of bankbooks, ATM cards, and SIM cards bound for Laos.

Police set up surveillance points and caught Rungroj receiving the package at the Golden Triangle checkpoint in the Chiang Saen District. Officers expanded their investigation and seized more packages from local companies containing similar items .

Authorities said the network was smuggling bankbooks and cards to Chinese 'gray groups' in Laos for use in scam operations that target the public.

Police Major General Manop Senakun, commander of the Chiang Rai Provincial Police, said: 'There are still people, not only in Chiang Rai but across the entire country, who are being deceived due to various human vulnerabilities, such as clicking on SMS links or being scammed on social media, which leads to financial losses.

‘We must urgently provide knowledge to serve as a protective shield against deception.'

The Golden Triangle, where Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar meet, has long been notorious for drug trafficking and large-scale scam operations run from compounds in Myanmar.

Criminal syndicates often lure impoverished victims from across Asia with fake job offers, then force them to run online fraud schemes targeting people worldwide.

(1 GBP = 43.48 THB)