A homeowner in Nong Lu told Thai authorities that a cable passing through his property into Myanmar was for repair work. He said he was paid 700 baht (US$20) a day to allow it to run through his premises.
The cable ran between two homes in Moo 9 before leaving an area accessible from both Thailand and Myanmar. It was a 48-core fibre optic line, strung along electric pylons for 350 metres across the border, which officials said supplied an illegal border casino and a suspected scam centre.
Authorities had detected internet use in the Nong Lu area that was far beyond normal public consumption. The National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission, the Anti-Online Fraud Center and a police-military task force raided 4 locations in Nong Loo Subdistrict, Sangkhla Buri District, Kanchanaburi Province and Samut Prakan Province. The searches at 2 locations in Kanchanaburi were authorised by warrants from Thong Pha Phum Provincial Court.
Police found the cable at one of the suspect properties. Officials used an optical time-domain reflectometer, or OTDR, to measure the line into Myanmar at approximately 350 metres.
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The raided homes were using about 6 terabytes of data each day. Trairat Viriyasirikul, the deputy secretary general and acting secretary general of the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission, said that volume “should be enough to serve around 300 to 400 people.”
Officials seized all the equipment and sent it to the Technology Crime Suppression Division for investigation and legal proceedings. The alleged offence concerns operating a telecommunications business without authorisation or using frequencies for telecommunications operations without permission, under the Telecommunications Business Act B.E. 2544.
Nong Lu is a border village in Kanchanaburi province and the gateway to the Three Pagodas Pass in Myanmar. The pass area is protected by ethnic armed militias that shelter criminals for a fee.
Non-governmental organisations say hundreds, possibly thousands, of people remain trapped in scam centres just over Thailand’s western border. Myanmar has become the epicentre of the global scam trade, taking that position from Cambodia.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimated in July that scam-related losses across the Asia-Pacific reached between US$88 billion and US$114 billion in 2025 alone. At least $10 billion was lost by Americans in 2024 to scam operations based in Southeast Asia, a 66 percent increase over the prior year. The U.S. Department of State said Americans lost over $7.2 billion in 2025 to Southeast Asia-based scam operations.
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