What's the real reason? Fraud has been around forever now. How is it that people were able to create so many mule accounts in the first place? What sort of KYC was going on? Why start limiting bank accounts without warning?

So many questions...

Update: my Thai friend just wrote me this:

"Not in trouble, it's the Chinese and Russians money laundering. Every Russian has had their accounts suspended, this was about half a year ago, now they are slowly doing the Chinese and Brits too. Vietnam is not much better, also suspending all foreigners accounts until you can prove you have a trc here."

Update2: just saw this on IG… https://www.instagram.com/p/DOZM0ZOkUAy/

We've been having a similar fraud issue here in South Korea as well. These criminals call vulnerable people, impersonate bankers or government officials, and social-engineer them into trasferring money. Some even pretend to have kidnapped your child, play AI-generated voice of a sobbing kid, and demand ransom.

Fraud has always been around, but I think a few recent developments have exacerbated the problem. KYC has been relaxed a lot since Covid, so you can open a whole bunch of accounts with just an image of an ID card. Lots of elderly people now have access to mobile banking, so they don't have to visit a physical branch where a clerk can flag suspicious transfer requests.

Bank accounts in South Korea now start with a daily transfer limit of 1 million won (about $700), even lower than the 50k bhat limit that the Thai government has instituted.

May 2025, "Vietnam to close 86M bank accounts for lack of biometric data", 20 comments, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45201549

> How is it that people were able to create so many mule accounts in the first place? What sort of KYC was going on?

They pay a low-income/no-income person a small fee (possibly monthly) to let them borrow their account. Sadly, people who would fall into this are not hard to find in Thailand.

> What sort of KYC was going on?

There are accounts that are grandfathered in and don’t require KYC but have been able to access online banking, etc. Mine is such, and my bank (BAY) is discontinuing that particular loophole at the end of this month. (I'm in Thailand right now to do this KYC, despite having not come back here for the last 6 years.)

Many tourists from Hong Kong/China/Taiwan were kidnapped from Thailand to work in scam centres in Cambodia, to the point it gave Thailand a bad name and affected their tourism income

I remember opening a bank account in a green one, while being on a tourist visa. Don't remember how they even established my address or anything beyond basic id. No real followup on source of funds or anything either. Wire comes in, cash goes out, nobody asks questions. It wasn't even before 9/11, it was 2015.

Thailand’s a very good place to get money out of you’re foreign organized crime in general - the fig leaf of “I’m buying an usually expensive condo/villa/yacht” is a good excuse.