Reeling them in

Online scammers are turning to electronic tablets and smartphones to scam senior citizens who are not technologically savvy and seen as having substantial assets, according to the Royal Thai Police.

Late last month, authorities announced they had busted a transnational call-center gang that had targeted Thais with millions of fake calls and messages, resulting in losses of billions of baht tied to people’s private information.

“The criminals can call from anywhere, making calls to Thailand through internet signals that are converted at a single gateway, we discovered, into home phone signals,” police Lt. Gen. Jirabhop Bhuridej, the Central Investigation Bureau commander, said at the time.