Thai police have arrested seven Chinese suspects over alleged links to a cross-border cybercrime network.

Cops detained the group at a restaurant in the Huai Khwang area of Bangkok, on January 7.

Officers raided the establishment on intelligence that the suspects had unlawfully entered Thailand.

They found that six of the men slipped into the country illegally and another had an expired stay permit.

Two of them allegedly helped run scam networks in the lawless Golden Triangle area in Southeast Asia, while one individual had fled China over alleged fraud charges involving more than 30 million baht (708,257 GBP).

Police Lieutenant Colonel Sutheera Theerasawat of Immigration Division 1 said: ' ‘We charged six of them with entering and staying in the country illegally, and another with overstaying.

‘We handed over the six suspects to the inquiry officer at Huai Khwang Police Station for further legal action.'

Thailand has become a notorious base for Chinese crime gangs 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.

(1 GBP = 42.36 THB)