Thailand’s Department of Special Investigation has issued an arrest warrant for Chinese businessman Wang Yicheng, alleging he helped run a network that laundered proceeds from scams and online gambling through illegal cryptocurrency mining. Investigators uncovered the network while probing mining operations that illicitly drew some $28 million worth of electricity, one of the largest such cases the agency has handled in recent years.
Thailand Charges Wang Yicheng as the Network’s Key Figure
DSI spokesman Police Major Woranan Srilam said on Tuesday that authorities charged Wang in November with theft and with violating the Computer Crimes Act, which covers interfering with computer systems according to Reuters. Wang has fled the country, according to the agency, and Thai authorities are coordinating with international counterparts to locate him. The agency named Wang, a former leader of a Thai-Chinese trade association, as a key figure among the Chinese investors behind the operation. The DSI had issued arrest warrants for four unnamed Chinese nationals and four Myanmar nationals in a statement last week.
Transnational organised crime groups use illegal crypto mining to “generate income, launder money, and drive technology-crime networks,” the agency said. U.S. law enforcement had already identified Wang as a suspect in a separate digital asset fraud investigation, and in June 2023 American authorities seized about $500,000 in cryptocurrency from an account in his name after tracing the funds to a fraud victim in Massachusetts. The U.S. Department of Justice declined to comment on the Thai warrant. Thailand’s SEC has separately proposed tighter funding rules for crypto firms to curb money laundering, extending approval requirements to the financiers behind major stakes.
Probe Ties Wang Yicheng to Pig-Butchering Scams
Wang first drew international attention through a Reuters investigation into transnational crypto-investment fraud, which found that a wallet in his name received at least $9.1 million between 2021 and 2022 from an account that TRM Labs and other blockchain firms linked to “pig-butchering” scams. The investigation could not establish whether Wang controlled the account or whether someone else used his identity to open it, and it documented his efforts to cultivate ties with Thai political and law enforcement elites.
Pig-butchering scams deceive victims into fraudulent cryptocurrency investments, and one blockchain firm tied some of the operations to KK Park, an industrial compound on the Myanmar-Thailand border. One victim, a 71-year-old California man, lost his $2.7 million life savings after a scammer posing as a young woman approached him online.
Thailand and other Southeast Asian nations have intensified crackdowns on largely Chinese-run scam syndicates in recent months, with operations frequently run from compounds staffed partly by trafficking victims that generate billions of dollars annually, according to the United Nations. The SEC recently blocked five major crypto exchanges operating without licenses as part of that wider enforcement drive. The warrant comes as Thailand pairs tougher enforcement with moves to widen its regulated market, having approved a five-year tax exemption on crypto gains for trades on licensed platforms and cleared Bitcoin for use on the regulated derivatives market.