Mobile company employee stole 10 million baht from customers in credit card data fraud

A Thai man who worked on the counter for two well known mobile phone operators stole the credit card details of customers and helped himself to riches in an elaborate fraud. 

He bought foreign goods which he sold online and purchased a house and several cars on the proceeds. 

Sathit Janpho, 29, – a man from Uttaradit who got a degree in computers at a Bangkok university – was arrested on Tuesday outside Central Rama II west of Bangkok. 

Taken into evidence were a large quantity of shoes, designer bags and expensive watches that had been purchased on Amazon and Ebay and other platforms. 

Also seized was a two million baht house in the Rama II area, a 2.5 million baht Mini Cooper, and Honda and  Toyota vehicles worth a further 2.4 million. 

Economic Crime Suppression police were called in after many complaints from customers of mobile phone operators. They said that the method used by Sathit to cover his tracks was designed to make him difficult to trace.

At his work he would steal the credit card numbers, expiry dates and CVC three digit codes from customers. He would then order goods from abroad online. 

These were delivered to a bogus address and would then be returned to the distributor. Sathit then arranged with a motorcycle taxi rider to go to the distributor to present fake documents to claim the goods.

He was thus never seen in person.

The goods were then sold on Facebook and elsewhere. 

Sathit admitted the fraud saying that he was employed by one operator but was sacked. But he got another job at a new phone company where he had been for the last three or four months. 

In total he had been stealing credit card details for the last three years and had grown rich on the proceeds. 

Police advised customers never to let credit cards out of their sight and to cover the CVC code with a sticker. In addition customers should sign up for bank alerts when their credit card is used to help stop them becoming victims of credit card fraud. 

Thai Visa / Daily News

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