After suspiciously checking that two houses were using enough internet connection for an entire village, they discovered that they were illegally providing internet connections to the Myanmar side.
Hot topics
On October 15, Thai authorities raided a house in Kanchanaburi province, which borders the Three Pagoda Region on the Myanmar side, where many suspect that online money laundering operations are taking place, and found a large 48-core fiber optic cable with high-speed internet connection and more than 350 meters (nearly 1,500 feet) of internet cable.
The Bangkok Post reported on October 15 that a team of police and soldiers, including the secretary-general of Thailand's National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC), raided two houses in Naung Lu village in Sangkhlaburi province, where data usage was significantly higher than normal, and found that they were secretly connecting to the Myanmar side of the internet, citing Thai authorities.
According to NBTC, one of the two homes uses 6 terabytes of internet data per day, which is enough data for 300 to 400 people, or three countries.
According to the detainees, they were paid 700 Thai baht, equivalent to 20 US dollars, per day for making these connections.
Chinese money laundering gangs are being targeted by US, Chinese and Thai authorities along the Myanmar border, with some of them moving across the Cambodian and Thai borders into Thailand and settling in areas controlled by armed ethnic groups, according to Thai-Myanmar border news reports. This includes the Three Pagoda region between Mon State and Kanchanaburi Province, the South Chin Morning Post reported on October 16.
The Chinese entrepreneurs who run these tiger-trafficking businesses are reportedly abandoning their large factories and moving to small hotels and rented apartments due to international pressure. The report also says that these businesses have been cut off from official infrastructure and food supplies, but they continue to survive by paying bribes to local authorities and buying diesel, Sterling Internet and illegal goods from countries with strong infrastructure such as Thailand.
Authorities have reportedly taken action against Thai hosts providing internet access to the Myanmar side for operating illegally.