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Bank of Thailand freezes 3M accounts, sets daily transfer limits to curb fraud
- donatj 1y ago3M =3 Million. I clicked the link wondering what Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing was doing in Thailand.
- esafak 1y agoThe article does say 3 Million, so the editing happened at HN's end.
- walterbell 1y agoHN auto-abbreviates submission titles, e.g. thousands to K, millions to M.
- mlinhares 1y agoI was once explaining to someone in the US why transactions in Mexico and Brazil take a tumble and start to be rejected at a much higher rate than usual due to banks being more stringent after 10 PM as its much more likely these would be fraud/scam/crime in general in these countries and they were amazed that this was a thing. Its sad that these scams are so widespread today that a heavy handed approach like this is necessary. Unfortunately doing these attacks is incredibly cheap :(
- esafak 1y agoTo me it suggests they don't have the technical- and financial means to detect fraud.
- dlisboa 1y agoUnfortunately the number of different financial scams is the highest in the world in these countries. US and EU the banks wouldn’t have the capabilities either, it’s simply too much to deal with. You can’t flag everything as fraud. It’s also a different kind of enemy. The biggest crime organization in Brazil has switched their primary focus from drug running to financial scams. They invest millions and set up legitimate companies with hundreds of employees to facilitate these schemes.
- xbar 1y agoThree things need to change to reduce it: 1. Banks need to own the risk, not the customer 2. Banks need to spend to defend 3. Laws need to make organized fraud catastrophically criminal. There is a reason Singapore does not have this problem.
- oefrha 1y agoWho the hell told you Singapore doesn't have this problem? It took me 5 seconds to find this reporting from 2022 https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/courts-crime/the-pig-butchering-scam-con-artists-who-come-for-your-heart-and-wallet https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/courts-crime/the-pig-... > It hit a record high last year, with $190.9 million stolen in such scams, more than five times the $36.9 million lost in 2019. Can't find more recent concrete figures in a minute or two but their police are busting balls through international collaboration in 2025 so they must have a big problem still: https://therecord.media/asia-scam-center-takedowns-singapore-police https://therecord.media/asia-scam-center-takedowns-singapore... I've seen bank defending people before with my own eyes. I was at a local branch doing some business and there was an old lady wanting to withdraw something like $50k to "pay a mortgage" or something, it was obvious she was scammed, the bank blocked her transaction and the teller was explaining to her she was scammed, and the old lady was shouting at the teller saying it was her money and they had no right to stop her. That's the thing, a lot of scam victims really don't believe they're scam victims until it's too late, and "it's their money, the bank has no right to stop them".
- nmfisher 1y agoSingapore definitely does have this problem, there are police/government warnings against scams and fraud plastered everywhere.
- kattagarian 1y agoIt's probably one of the biggest criticism about PIX, the Brazilian method of transferring money: it's too easy. Early on, kidnappers started taking people off the streets and forcing them to transfer all their money, because victims had no choice but to give their password, and there was no limit on the transfer amount.
- dkga 1y agoYes, but the Central Bank of Brazil caught up quickly.
- catlikesshrimp 1y agoCriminals always find a way Decades ago, there was a popular activity called "Paseos Millonarios" (More or less, Millionare Rides) where criminals at night picked up a victim coming out of an ATM, and took him to several other ATMs around, everytime drawing non-suspicious amounts of money. The criminals didn't even need the PIN. They neither entered the ATM hut because only the card holder was sent in. The final solution was disabling the ATM network durimg night, except the ones located in safe places. Showing you are drawing money in a hurry in a lone hut in the night was a bad idea, anyways.
- ryandrake 1y agoMany highly-sophisticated technical solutions are still vulnerable to the "wrench attack". https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/ Unfortunately, whenever governments try to solve the wrench attack, they do so by removing the end user's control over their own stuff.
- Marsymars 1y agoAnd if you, as a savvy individual, makes yourself immune to a wrench attack, it’s unhelpful if the person hitting you with a wrench doesn’t believe you.
- robocat 1y agoDaily limit for ATM withdrawals exists in New Zealand (NZD2000 I think). Why did they visit multiple ATMs?
- hyperliner 1y ago[dead]
- duxup 1y agoPerhaps similar to the situation where if you block internet traffic from a region or country ... you really do reduce the amount of malicious traffic and attacks an application sees, significantly. To the point that if you can, it's surprisingly effective.
- crazybonkersai 1y agoI once wired som money to an acquaintance in Ethiopia using Western Union. The clerk made sure several times that I knew that I was doing and he was really surprised when learned that I actually personally knew the guy I was transferring money to.
- IshKebab 1y agoWoah we found him guys! The one legit user of Western Union.
- tencentshill 1y agoDiscounting the many, many immigrants that use it to send money to family.
- hnlmorg 1y agoI opened that link expecting to be outraged but instead finding myself sympathetic to their solution. High value transfers should be subject to additional scrutiny to confirm it’s legitimate. The hard part is making sure you balance that well enough so that you’re protecting against malaise without the bank then becoming a consumer problem themselves. It will be interesting to see how well this works.
- weird-eye-issue 1y agoThey froze tons of accounts without warning, it was not just a matter of setting daily limits
- refulgentis 1y agoIf I understand correctly*, they froze 3 million accounts tied to 177K mules. Couldn't find anything that indicated there was a mass freezing of legitimate accounts, or a singular complaint of an incident of that happening. * Can't copy paste...is the article an image!?
- debugnik 1y ago> is the article an image!? I can't check right now, but I'm guessing they set `user-select: none` in CSS.
- mystraline 1y agoAbout that. A browser is a 'User agent', as in it is supposed to act on MY behalf, and things in my intent and benefit. Similar agents are real estate agents, or attorneys as my agent. So... For something that is MY agent, why are browsers creating, and instituting anti-agent choices against my will? Barring excuses of "following the spec", I should be able to easily disable my user-agent's execution of said onerous code. (I'm ignoring this for Google chrome. They're an adtech company, and they won in court as a monopoly. Fuck them.)
- cf100clunk 1y ago[flagged]
- hnlmorg 1y agoThe title would then say “3M’s accounts” to denote ownership.
- JumpCrisscross 1y agoWould note that 3M is an unconventional was of representing 3mm or 3mn.
- cf100clunk 1y agoI got downvoted due to someone's unconventional reading. You win some, you lose some.
- righthand 1y agoYou’re downvoted because you’ve strongly indicated you didn’t read the article.
- cf100clunk 1y agoThat's an unwarranted assumption.
- righthand 1y agoAnd your comment is an unwarranted assumption of the article and the discussion around it. See?
- hnlmorg 1y agoI’ve never seen ‘mm’ nor ‘mn’ used in British English, where ‘m’ is a common abbreviation for “million”. But this might be a localisation. Wikipedia does recognise ‘m’ as an abbreviation: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1,000,000 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1,000,000 It’s definitely open to confusion but generally if you already known that abbreviation exists then one can usually deduce how to interpret that abbreviation from the context of the sentence. In this case, it’s a financial headline so I assumed it was “million”.
- petermcneeley 1y agoNew technocratic control repackage just dropped: "scam losses"
- andrewmcwatters 1y agoFor reference, banks in the United States flag all transactions above $10,000, and repeat transactions that appear to be skirting this threshold.
- tenpies 1y agoAlso worth thinking about inflation with this one. The $10,000 figure originated with the 1970 Bank Secrecy Act[1]. Back then, that was a lot of money. If it had kept up with plain old vanilla government-reported inflation, the number would be closer to $83,000 today[2]. --- [1] https://www.fincen.gov/resources/statutes-and-regulations/bank-secrecy-act https://www.fincen.gov/resources/statutes-and-regulations/ba... [2] https://www.dollartimes.com/inflation/inflation.php?amount=10000&year=1970 https://www.dollartimes.com/inflation/inflation.php?amount=1...
- petermcneeley 1y agoBig Mac Index suggests more like 30x
- latchkey 1y agoWhat'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/ https://www.instagram.com/p/DOZM0ZOkUAy/
- walterbell 1y agoMay 2025, "Vietnam to close 86M bank accounts for lack of biometric data", 20 comments, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45201549 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45201549
- kijin 1y agoWe'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.
- walterbell 1y agohttps://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/sep/08/myanmar-military-junta-scam-centres-trafficking-crime-syndicates-kk-park https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/sep/08/m... KK Park – a vast, heavily guarded complex stretching for 210 hectares (520 acres) along the churning Moei River that forms Myanmar’s border with Thailand.. with its on-site hospital, restaurants, bank and neat lines of villas with manicured lawns, looks more like the campus of a Silicon Valley tech company than what it really is: the frontline of a multibillion-dollar criminal fraud industry fuelled by human trafficking and brutal violence.. Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos have in recent years become havens for transnational crime syndicates running scam centres such as KK Park, which use enslaved workers to run complex online fraud and scamming schemes that generate huge profits.
- ameliaquining 1y agoThe truncated headline is extremely misleading; it makes it sound like they're having a currency crisis, rather than this being an anti-fraud measure. (I'm not finding any indications in other sources that there is a currency crisis or that the anti-fraud rationale is pretextual, though I could have missed something.) (ETA: HN title has been re-edited, previously didn't have the "to curb fraud" clause.)
- JumpCrisscross 1y agoYeah, flagged for editorialisation. (EDIT: Unflagged for mentioning fraud. Would also recommend changing the ambiguous 3M to 3mm or 3mn.)
- hnlmorg 1y agoIt’s a long headline. I bet the editorialisation was reluctantly done to work around HNs character limit. If you have a better suggestion for an abridged headline then you could share and hopefully the submitter can still update this submission.
- normie3000 1y agoIt makes it sound like they're having an argument with the 3M Company to me.
- kmeisthax 1y agoIsn't Thailand also one of the countries where Google is taking away people's sideloading rights?
- walterbell 1y agoSeptember 14th, https://www.thailandnews.co/2025/09/bank-of-thailand-seeks-fix-for-wrongful-account-freezing-amid-scam-crackdown/ https://www.thailandnews.co/2025/09/bank-of-thailand-seeks-f... > Bank of Thailand (BOT) will meet with commercial banks and the Anti-Online Scam Operations Centre (AOC) on Monday to address growing complaints about the wrongful freezing of bank accounts.. after small retailers and individuals reported being abruptly cut off from their funds without warning or recourse.. Assistant BOT Governor.. acknowledged that current procedures for identifying and freezing suspected “mule accounts” need refinement to prevent harming innocent customers. Many account holders have taken to social media to express frustration over being unable to access their money or conduct business after transfers from unknown sources triggered automated freezes.
- coolspot 1y ago> Assistant BOT Governor Good name for an AI agent orchestration framework.
- PaywallBuster 1y ago> By July, 3 million accounts have been closed this wasn't a swift action overnight they could be blocking this many accounts on a yearly basis just from scam reports at the police station or more which seems to be the case recently, but not overnight this is bad article
- fryry 1y agoI live in Thailand, many expat accounts have been closed down, making it very hard to pay bills etc. in the country. That will form part of the 3 million. Huge overreaction that will dent the economy and will no doubt be flip-flopped on in a few months time.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> will no doubt be flip-flopped on in a few months time As emergency measures usually are.
- alephnerd 1y ago[flagged]
- baobabKoodaa 1y ago> good ???
- cobertos 1y agoCan you elaborate on the kind of expats that are undesirable? I don't know what specific types of people you might be referring to
- alephnerd 1y ago1. The kind that is looking at visiting Thailand as a cheap way to booze, party, smoke weed, and do other stuff. They do not spend enough money to move the needle economically in a country where the majority of the economy is connected to automotive and electronics manufacturing 2. The kind that try to reside in Thailand long term but don't want to file for immigration, so using various loopholes like the "Visa dash" or paying for Thai language classes with no attendance or requirements to attend the class. Lots of drop shippers are doing this and are dodging incorporation taxes in Thailand 3. The kind that come to only train Muay Thai or BJJ, but don't contribute to the rest of the economy (I'm guilty of this). Living and training exclusive at a Fairtex or a Sityodong isn't percolating capital in the rest of Thailand. All 3 of these types of expats and tourists are barely spending $500/mo in Thailand after rent or hotel spend, and simply don't contribute to the Thai economy to the same degree the other sectors of the economy are. The only reason those 3 types of tourists are tolerated is because the businesses they patronize are overwhelmingly owned by local politicians and give them pocket change, but aren't actually useful from an economic perspective, because it has depressed wages, and exacerbated organized crime. Heritage and upscale tourism is a separate story, because the premiums that can be demanded and the wages and skills needed incentivize upskilling as well as building a white money local ecosystem.
- hyghjiyhu 1y agoMaybe I'm too suspicious but Thailandb is not a democratic country, was recently in an armed conflict. Could there be something more to this?
- darkest_ruby 1y agoCan someone explain why MM means millions, and not just M, 3M ==3 millions?
- walterbell 1y agohttps://accountinginsights.org/how-to-abbreviate-million-in-finance/ https://accountinginsights.org/how-to-abbreviate-million-in-... The abbreviation “M” for million can lead to confusion in finance. Historically, “M” derives from the Latin word “mille,” meaning “thousand.” As such, it has traditionally been used in some accounting or construction contexts to denote a thousand. For example, $5M could historically represent $5,000, creating ambiguity. To represent one million in finance, the abbreviation “MM” is widely used. This notation originates from “mille mille,” meaning “thousand thousands” in Latin, equating to one million. This clarity makes “MM” a preferred choice in financial statements and reports. Other abbreviations for million, such as “mn” or “mln,” are also encountered.. The Financial Times, for example, adopted “mn” for millions to improve accessibility for text-to-speech software. While these alternatives exist, “MM” remains a prevalent and widely understood abbreviation for million in American finance.
- mmh0000 1y agoBecause there are too many standards[0]! If only someone would invent one more standard that everyone could follow... The Wikipedia on long and short scales[1][2] for the root of the problem. [0] https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales [2] https://grammarhow.com/m-vs-mm-million/ https://grammarhow.com/m-vs-mm-million/
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
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- rr808 1y agoI wonder in the crypto based future if there will be any safeguards to avoid scams and fraud. Instant settlement is not a good thing for me, Ideally any transaction over $1000 should take a week and can be cancelled. Transactions over $100k I'd like to go to a physical location and prove my identity.
- ronsor 1y agoIn many cryptocurrencies, you can cancel a transaction before the first confirmation by paying a (relatively) small fee. Your other points defeat the purpose of most crypto, though.
- tenuousemphasis 1y agoVaults are a proposed Bitcoin construct that allow you to have similar features. In order to work, it requires some breaking changes which may or may not ever happen.
- olalonde 1y agoWith layer 2, probably centralized, payment networks. Layer 1 is too "low level" for most transactions.
- justajot 1y agoThese are exactly the types of things Chia is working on, and at least to some degree, are in production.
- FabHK 1y agoOf course, if the sender can cancel transactions at their discretion, that enables another class of frauds. The solution has to lie in some trusted centralized party outside the payment system [0]. Chia can't solve this. A banking system and legal system can. [0] Goharshady, A. K. (2021). Irrationality, Extortion, or Trusted Third-parties: Why it is Impossible to Buy and Sell Physical Goods Securely on the Blockchain (arXiv:2110.09857). http://arxiv.org/abs/2110.09857 http://arxiv.org/abs/2110.09857
- zelphirkalt 1y agoDoes "MM" usually stand for "million"? In German we have "Millionen" and then "Milliarden", but in English that is "Billion", so "MM" cannot stand for "Milliarden" either. And "Mega" already is *10^6, but only has 1 "M". So at first naturally I read "Million Million", but then thought: "What? There is no way they have that many accounts!" It is a very confusing way to write the number and no explanation seems to fit, other than "There is a second 'M' to avoid clash with the company name '3M'.". Is that the explanation?
- mhluongo 1y agoIt comes from finance - the rest of us just use "M" for million. I believe it's from Roman numerals (MM = thousand * thousand).
- IndrekR 1y agoThe funny thing is, that MM in roman numerals means 2000.
- conductr 1y agoI’m in finance and exclusively use the M and K to reference millions and thousands. Everyone says the MM is more accurate and I get that from a Roman numeral perspective it may be (if you ignore that it actually means 2000), yet I’ve never once encountered anyone using M as a thousand in the writing or reading of financial figures. I think it’s primarily a financial news, journalism/writing style, I rarely see it in business at all. Sometimes I see MM from the PE/banker guys and that’s about the only time I see it IRL.
- chowells 1y agoOk, I see where the "actually 2000" misconception would come from. A mile is 2000 steps, and "mile" comes from "mille". But "mille" means 1000. Specifically, it was the distance covered by 1000 paces from a marching Roman soldier. It's more consistent to measure paces than steps in the face of left/right asymmetries, so it's the unit implied when you just say you're marching 1000.
- lvl155 1y agoCrypto solves this /s.
- vvpan 1y agoIt does. /not s
- mystraline 1y agoSo, sure these bank regulations are "fraud preventing". But if you pay attention to GPS jam maps and news sources, they are currently also under significant unrest. https://thediplomat.com/2025/09/indonesias-unrest-revives-fears-over-militarys-expanding-role/ https://thediplomat.com/2025/09/indonesias-unrest-revives-fe... > Over the past two weeks, Indonesia has been rocked by some of the most widespread unrest in recent memory, with mass demonstrations erupting across Jakarta and other major cities. The protests are the result of long-running economic strain, political discontent, and public outrage at perceived elite entitlement. Its basically a worldwide proletariat uprising against the elite. And the current article hits people in the pocketbooks. And any protestors who are gaining popularity will undoubtedly be in those 3 million accounts blocked.
- vvpan 1y agoThe article is about Thailand, you got the countries confused. But thanks for sharing, didn't know.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- sneak 1y agoThe article is about Thailand, not Indonesia.
- mystraline 1y agoWell, damn. I completely misread that. I now feel kinda dumb.
- wasimanitoba 1y agoI'm relieved to see another educated person doing this. It's gotten worse for me lately, where I keep mixing up train stations and locations with similar names or characteristics, so I can totally imagine hearing Thailand and thinking about Indonesia instead.
- instagib 1y agoThey’re trying to reduce non-technical people or elder scams and fraud. A scam network takes over phones, tricks people on friends lists to follow directions so their phone can be remotely controlled (Apple and Android). Then the cycle repeats and they try to drain bank accounts in the process. Thailand is placing 50k maximums for digital transfers then adjusting over time based on … 50k baht = $1,575 USD
- chvid 1y agoIn Denmark I have a daily on my bank account of 50,000 dkr - about 8,000 usd. If I want to do a money transfer larger than that I have to call my bank and answer a bunch of questions to verify my identity.
- heavenlyblue 1y agoIf somebody held a gun to your head, is there a wayto answer the questions differently such that the money transfer is faked? I doubt so, so it's quite similar. I guess it's harder to talk under duress.
- hsbauauvhabzb 1y agoHow do you remotely control an iPhone?
- pests 1y agoRDP? TeamViewer? Jump?
- notmyjob 1y agoeSIM. Been discussed on here. Nothing being done to address it so far as I can see. Eg fake QR code.
- evilduck 1y agoIt’s a built in feature of FaceTime. https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/request-give-remote-control-a-facetime-call-iph5d70f34a3/ios https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/request-give-remote-c...
- ghostly_s 1y ago3 million accounts (the original text), not "3M"[1] accounts. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3M https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3M
- notmyjob 1y agoGreat news.
- novaleaf 1y agoI know of a Thai person who fell for an "e-work" scam over the last year. The hook was that you pre-pay some amount, do some trival work, then get like 500% return on your "investment". So they filter+train their mark by having them sign up for whatever financial transfer workflow, and figure out how gullable they are by giving them some payouts. A big part of this is some chat-group where lots of other fake-workers post comments saying how nervious/risky it seems and how sometimes the payment is delayed but they all eventually get paid. Eventually they let the mark sign up for some high-value amount, like equivalent of a few thousand USD. When the mark doesn't get paid, they contact the "technical support" team that then tries to social engineer the victim to loose even more money transferring funds the wrong direction (the scammers picked financial apps that make this mistake easiest). I kind of find it unbelievable that people fall for this stuff, but the obvious proof is that enough people do :(
- derefr 1y agoAlways seemed to me that the correct response to this scam is to recruit everyone you know to go through just the first step of the scam and then quit while they’re ahead. Like taking a casino’s offer of free food and then leaving without gambling.
- novaleaf 1y agoIIRC they chat group was using LINE, where the scammers can delete messages / kick people at will. So more people joining just to make a few bucks from the initial payout just increases the credibility of the operation. Also the initial "tasks" the mark performs are worth only like a few USD. not worth anybody's time except for certain types of vulnerable people who not-coincidentally make good victims.
- thephyber 1y ago> I kind of find it unbelievable that people fall for this stuff I remember reading a headline that being poor is equivalent to losing about 5 IQ points. Don’t know how true that is, but my intuition tells me that most people financially struggle, spend a lot of extra time worrying about money, and in general act a little more desperate and would be a little more aware/skeptical if their stress + financial situation allowed it. After a few years working in cybersecurity, I viewed EVERYTHING through the lens of “is someone lying to me?”. Emails, text messages, downloading software from a website/App Store, job offers, investment opportunities, etc.the surface area is limitless. There’s exactly zero chance that even an experienced professional with excellent eyesight, who reads up on the newest scams, who doesn’t have lots of family / social events to care for, etc will never get hacked/scammed. Even in the cybersecurity industry, almost all companies have abandoned the idea that there will never be a breach, and have moved towards thinking about resiliency, where any breaches that do happen are minimized or closed quickly/automatically. That’s a lot of words to say: even though I thought I would never get scammed, once I spent more time educating myself about how it happens, it seems obvious to me that scams work a percentage of the time and the scale of attempts is enormous.
- charlieyu1 1y agoHow about stopping the scam centres in Cambodia altogether
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Kate5477 1y ago[dead]
- ericdotlee 1y agoAny idea what triggered this in Southeast Asia? I think Vietnam just did the same thing with over 80M accounts. Seems like the IMF accused them all of harboring mass money laundering or offshoring schemes?
- judithemith765 1y ago[dead]
- klingcarl264 1y ago[dead]