9m IDs of doctors, retirees and more found stolen

Nine people were arrested on Monday for allegedly stealing the identities of about 9 million individuals with the stolen data found categorised into "doctors", "the rich", "retirees" and "teachers".

Deputy national police chief Pol Maj Gen Suwat Saengnoom said the suspects were arrested in a series of raids spanning 22 locations in 16 provinces including Bangkok, Chiang Rai, Chiang Mai, Nakhon Sawan, Khon Kaen, Sa Kaeo, Mae Hong Son, Lampang, Lop Buri, Amnat Charoen, Chanthaburi, Prachuap Khiri Khan and Ayutthaya.

According to police, the arrested suspects included only one woman. They nine were identified as Boonrak, 26, Somkhuan, 53, Saengkaeo, 24, Atharee, 21, Chakree, 38, Poonsap, 31, Watin, 23, Nantawat, 29, and Weerayut, 31.

Police seized from them five notebook computers, six desktop computers, a phone farm box, 31 mobile phones and tablets, 112 SIM cards, 10 bank books, 775,000 baht in cash, two guns and 42 rounds of ammunition.

The identification theft by the suspects reportedly began in 2022. In total, they came into the possession of the data of 9,616,199 people and the pictures of 477 ID cards.

Pol Col Ekasit Panseethao, chief of Crime Suppression Sub-Division 4, said the stolen IDs matched victims in 13,677 scam complaints with alleged damage worth about 2 billion baht.

Pol Col Pasakorn Napachote, a commander at the Anti-Corruption Division, elaborated they also included those of government officials who were defrauded of about 300 million baht all combined.

According to the commander, the stolen data was stored on the cloud for easy access by buyers who were likely scammers and online gambling hosts. They were kept in more than 10,000 files constituting 13.5 gigabytes of memory.

The data was noted as well organised with categories including "doctors", "teachers", "the rich" and "retired government officials".

Deputy Digital Economy and Society Minister Boonthida Somchai inspected the impounded equipment at the Central Investigation Bureau in Bangkok on Tuesday. She said data theft was a serious crime and the abuse of information from Thai people could cause great damage.