Police raided a suspected scam hub storing sim boxes linked to a cross-border fraud network in northeast Thailand.

Officers stormed the house in Nong Khai province bordering Laos on Wednesday, following reports it was being used as a base for transnational scam operations.

Dramatic footage shows cops opening the locked premises using bolt cutters before rushing to a room on the second floor, where they discovered five sim boxes still running.

The devices were reportedly used to disguise international calls as local ones.

Authorities seized five mobile sim boxes, each with 32 slots, and five TP-Link internet routers used with the sim cards.

They also recovered two Gongniu power strips, two UPS units, five DTAC sim cards, a Tapo CCTV camera, and five sets of power amplifier covers for concealing the sim boxes, including front and rear panels.

Police Lieutenant General Noppakao Somanat, deputy commissioner of Provincial Police Region 4, said: ‘We have seized the items and are preparing to make a joint record with the forensic police to gather more evidence.

‘We are currently conducting further investigation to trace links to scammer networks in neighbouring countries.'

Officials said the SIM boxes were an affordable way for call centre gangs to call victims, by masking international phone numbers as local ones. The equipment also made it difficult to trace the users.

Thailand has become a notorious base for crime gangs, usually run by Chinese bosses, operating cross-border fraud and human trafficking operations in neighbouring Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar.

Thai and Chinese authorities were coordinating to crack down on the transnational crime rings.