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Ya and Warassaya Sahman. Design/HaRDstories
Hundreds of Thais were trafficked to Cambodia last year, held captive, and forced to authorise fraudulent transactions through their own bank accounts. Many returned home only to find arrest warrants, frozen accounts, and years of legal battles ahead.
Behind the bars of a two-by-two-metre cell at a police station north of Bangkok, the air reeked of sweat. Six men were crammed together in the darkness. One was Ya Sahman, 43, arrested on fraud charges and accused of violating Thailand’s cybercrime laws.
Outside, his wife Warassaya clung to the bars, comforting him in their native Malay: “Don’t cry, eat your food. I’m trying to get you bail as quickly as I can.”
Ya Sahman is one of hundreds of Thais who were trafficked to Cambodia, imprisoned in compounds, and forced to hand over their bank accounts to cybercrime syndicates. After escaping and returning home, he and his wife faced criminal prosecution – charged with allowing their accounts to be used in online fraud schemes.
As authorities crack down on so-called “mule accounts” – bank accounts used to launder money from online scams – arrest numbers have surged in recent years. But investigators, prosecutors, and judges now face a challenge those statistics obscure: distinguishing between criminals who profit from fraud and trafficking victims whose identities were stolen under threat.
Banking regulations introduced in 2023 requiring facial recognition for large transfers were designed to stop mule accounts. But police say criminal methods have evolved: syndicates now traffic people to neighbouring countries rather than simply buying accounts, keeping victims captive to scan their faces whenever transactions require it.
Lured by false promises
Ya Sahman once earned 30,000 baht (about 950 USD) a month at a factory in Pattani, a predominantly Malay Muslim province in Thailand’s Deep South and one of the country’s poorest provinces where the average household scrapes by on less than 20,000 baht. Tired of factory shifts that left no room for family life, he quit to run his own business – renting inflatable bouncy castles to children at local markets.
It didn’t go well. By October 2024, the family had packed up and moved to Sa Kaeo province, right on the Cambodian border. At the time, the crossing at Aranyaprathet was the busiest along the entire Thai-Cambodia frontier, with more than ten billion baht in trade flowing through each month.Ya and Warassaya hoped some of that prosperity might rub off on them.
“We hoped to build a new life and establish ourselves there,” Ya said.
They set up at the nightly market: bouncy castle, secondhand shoes, soft drinks. Every evening, the same routine. Then on 25 November 2024, a well-dressed Thai woman in her twenties stopped by their stall. She had a proposal: admin work for Warassaya, driving for Ya, both in Cambodia. The pay was 20,000 to 30,000 baht a month, plus free accommodation and meals.
Warassaya did the maths. It was more than they were making at the market. She asked for time to think about it.
No pressure, the woman said. Why not come see the workplace first?
That evening at eight, they met at Aranyaprathet railway station. Another Thai woman picked them up on a motorbike and took them to a shopping centre nearby. Three Cambodian men were waiting.
The men led them away from the main roads, down paths that cut through rice fields. Warassaya felt uneasy. “Why are we going this way?” she asked. “Why not through immigration?”
The men pulled out knives and sharpened metal rods. They took the family’s valuables and identity cards, then forced them to keep walking – along waterways, down routes that avoided every CCTV camera. By the time they reached the compound in Poipet, just across the border, there was no way back. The family – parents and their 3-year-old son – were now prisoners.
The same trap
A few months after the Sahmans were trafficked, in January 2025, Min and Eve fell into an identical snare, according to their account to HaRDstories.
The couple had worked as data entry clerks for a government agency north of Bangkok until their contracts ended in December 2024. Two months of unemployment had left them behind on monthly debt payments when they spotted a job posting on Facebook: restaurant manager and kitchen worker needed in Cambodia.
Unlike the Sahmans, the two women took precautions. Min called a friend already working in Poipet and sent over the company documents. The friend looked them over and confirmed it seemed legitimate, similar to the casino restaurant where she worked.
The driver who collected them the next morning seemed professional enough. He arrived in a dark grey Toyota Altis with two other men he introduced as friends. But the first stop wasn’t the restaurant. It was a bank.
“Two men in the car took us to open accounts and watched us the whole time,” Min recalled. They were told to open two additional accounts each – for salaries and allowances, the men explained.
By evening, they’d reached the same border area where the Sahmans had crossed. At a cattle pen in Aranyaprathet, another car picked them up. Min and Eve started looking for ways to escape, but the men escorting them were armed.
They were forced onto a boat, then driven to an apartment building on the Cambodian side. When they tried to call for help, there was no signal.
The next day, they were taken to an eleven-storey building called “Hi-So”. The people inside – Thais, Cambodians, and Chinese – confiscated their phones and ID cards. They ordered Min to open her banking apps.
Min caught Eve’s eye and signalled for her to delete the apps from her own phone. Someone noticed. A man grabbed a stick.
“Restore the apps,” he said. “If you don’t restore them, you’re in trouble.”
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Once the gang had access to their accounts, they increased the transaction limits and locked the couple inside. Like the Sahmans, Min and Eve were kept captive to be brought out whenever the criminals needed faces to scan for transfers.
The new trafficking model
The facial recognition requirement that made this trafficking model necessary was introduced in 2023. Any transfer over 50,000 baht, or cumulative daily transfers exceeding 200,000 baht, now requires the account holder to scan their face through their banking app.
The regulation was designed to make mule accounts harder to operate, to ensure the person authorising a transaction was actually the account holder, not a criminal who’d bought or stolen their details.
But criminal syndicates evolved their methods. Instead of buying bank account details, they began trafficking Thais to Cambodia and holding them captive – human collateral for the digital age.
According to Thailand’s Technology Crime Investigation Bureau, mule account arrests have nearly sextupled in two years – from about 1,000 cases in 2023 to more than 6,000 in the first nine months of 2025 alone.
The Immanuel Foundation, an anti-trafficking organisation, has documented at least 961 such cases between October 2024 and October 2025 – Thais lured to Cambodia and forced to surrender control of their financial identities through facial scans. The International Organisation for Migration reported a 230 percent increase in trafficking for forced criminality across Southeast Asia between 2022 and 2023, from 296 to 978 cases.
Police Major General Niwet Aphawasit, Deputy Commander of the Technology Crime Investigation Bureau, has watched mule account operations evolve in response to each new government countermeasure. “It started with buying accounts from acquaintances,” he told HaRDstories. “Then it shifted to buying them online. Now criminals traffic people to neighbouring countries to use their accounts. Most recently, they’ve even moved to corporate accounts to get around facial recognition entirely.”
Prinya Hom-anek, a member of Thailand’s National Cyber Security Committee, defended the facial recognition policy despite its unintended consequences. “Without facial scanning measures for money transfers, the damage would be much greater.” He estimated the requirement has reduced daily losses from online fraud by 30 percent.
HaRDstories requested an interview with the Bank of Thailand to discuss mule account prevention measures and whether current policies had been assessed for potential trafficking risks. The Bank declined, responding that such matters were not part of the organisation’s communications plan.
Police, meanwhile, are proposing their own solutions. “Mule accounts are the heart of cybercrime,” Police Major General Niwet said. “If mule accounts can’t move money, the fraud fails.”
He suggested the Bank of Thailand implement monitoring for the country’s 116.4 million accounts holding less than 50,000 baht – 89 percent of all accounts and the category most at risk of becoming mule accounts. When these accounts show suspicious activity – multiple large transfers in quick succession, or money rapidly flowing in and out – banks should temporarily freeze the funds and require in-person identity verification before allowing the transfer to proceed.
The goal: stop money before it reaches second-tier mule accounts where it gets laundered or transferred overseas.
“Facial scanning policies help but aren’t enough,” he said. “What Thailand can do immediately is prevent that money from leaving the country.”
Escape and arrest
For five days, the Sahmans were held in their compound in Poipet. On the night of 29 November, they saw their chance. Warassaya convinced the guard to let them buy nappies for their son. A man escorted them outside. When he stepped away to urinate, they ran.
They flagged down a tuk-tuk and made it to the border crossing at Ban Khlong Luek. By the next day, they were back in Bangkok.
The nightmare, they thought, was finally over.
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Back in the capital, the Sahmans discovered their bank accounts had been frozen. When they tried to withdraw cash from an ATM, the screen simply refused. Then came the summonses.
Warassaya faced four criminal cases. Ya faced two. The accounts bearing their names had been used to receive money from fraud victims – in one case, 40,000 baht transferred by someone who’d been tricked through an online app.
“I’m in the hardest period of my life,” Warassaya said. “I can’t use my bank accounts. I can’t work. It’s like being bankrupt.”
To unfreeze accounts when cases are already in court, victims must fight through the entire judicial process, obtain either a certificate that the case has concluded or a court order lifting the freeze, then submit those documents to their banks. The process can take years.
In December 2024, the Sahmans contacted the Immanuel Foundation, which helps trafficking victims, for help. Jaruwat Jinmonca, the organisation’s vice chairman, explained that his team conducts initial assessments of rescued victims. When evidence suggests trafficking rather than willing participation, he refers cases to government authorities for formal screening through a process coordinated by the Department of Special Investigation and the Ministry of Social Development.
If approved, victims receive certificates documenting their trafficking experience – crucial evidence for their legal defence.
The Sahmans passed screening and received their certificates. HaRDstories reviewed the certificates along with arrest warrants and frozen account documentation that corroborate their account. But certification doesn’t guarantee protection from prosecution.
In legal limbo
On a Sunday afternoon in June 2025 at Pak Klong Rangsit Police Station north of Bangkok, Deputy Inspector Phongsathon Lalesirong sat across from Warassaya, reviewing Ya’s bail request. He called his supervisor.
“This case has a trafficking victim screening certificate from the Ministry of Social Development,” he explained over the phone. “The documents state they were forced to scan faces in Cambodia and confirm they’re victims of call centre gangs.”
He hung up and sighed. “When the boss found out it was a mule account case, he wasn’t keen on granting bail.”
Deputy Inspector Phongsathon wanted to help, but legal constraints complicated the decision. Thailand’s 2023 Emergency Decree on Technological Crimes prohibits anyone from opening or allowing others to use bank accounts illegally, with penalties up to three years’ imprisonment or 300,000 baht in fines. The law makes no explicit provision for trafficking victims, leaving individual officers, prosecutors, and judges to interpret how certification should affect prosecution decisions.
Ya received bail two days later. But the legal battles were only beginning.
“Police must separate human trafficking from defrauding others. They cannot be considered together in the same case,” Police Major General Niwet said. But he explained that the current legal framework means trafficking victim certificates “can supplement police case files but cannot erase the crime of their bank accounts being used as mule accounts.”
In practice, victims must prove their innocence through the courts – often whilst detained, always with frozen accounts, frequently for years.
When certification isn’t enough
Not everyone who passes screening receives bail. Kae – the nickname she asked to be identified by – is a 20-year-old woman from Udon Thani in northeastern Thailand, discovered this after enduring more than a year in captivity.
Kae was studying vocational level 3 and selling yoghurt drinks at traffic lights to help ease her family’s financial burden. During semester break, she found a server job posting on Facebook. “I decided to go because the salary was 20,000 baht with free accommodation and meals,” she told HaRDstories. “I thought working during the break would bring money back for school.”
She never returned to school.
After being trafficked in March 2024, Kae was held captive and forced to work as a call centre operator. A month into her captivity, she was sold to another compound. When she tried to escape, her captors beat her with a metal rod. “They dragged me upstairs and locked me up. A Chinese man hit me with metal and handcuffed me to the bed, then left me in the middle of a rice field in Cambodia.”
Kae endured more than a year in these conditions before she was released in March 2025. Cambodian villagers found her in the fields. The Immanuel Foundation arranged to bring her home. She passed trafficking victim screening and was diagnosed by psychiatrists with stress and depression.
Nevertheless, she faced an arrest warrant from Samrong Nua Police Station for fraud – her account had received victims’ money whilst she was imprisoned. She tried to report to police, but arrived after the warrant had been issued. The Immanuel Foundation attempted to arrange bail so she could fight her case from outside prison.
The court refused, citing flight risk. Kae remains incarcerated, awaiting her verdict at Samut Prakan Provincial Court on 9 February.
The verdict
By August 2025, the Sahmans had relocated to Hat Yai in the South, where they found construction work earning 600 baht daily and Warassaya 400 baht. They’d rebuilt their lives from nothing, but six criminal cases still hung over the family – four against Warassaya, two against Ya.
On 1 September 2025, Warassaya woke at 4am to prepare for the three-hour drive to Yala Provincial Court for one of her cases. Ya drove whilst Warassaya held their son, eventually leaving him with a caregiver in Pattani. By 8am, they’d reached courtroom number 4. The clerk who greeted them had once brought her child to their bouncy castle business, back when life was simpler.
At 10am, a middle-aged female judge took the bench and began reading the verdict.
The court found that whilst the plaintiff had indeed been defrauded – 40,000 baht transferred through Warassaya’s account – she bore no responsibility for the deception. She had been trafficked to Cambodia and forced to scan her face to authorise transactions. No evidence suggested she received compensation. The charges were dismissed.
Warassaya lifted her hijab to wipe tears from her eyes. Three more cases await. She hopes this verdict will set a precedent for how courts weigh trafficking victim certification against mule account charges.
Min and Eve have transformed their ordeal into advocacy. Both now work for the Immanuel Foundation, helping other Thai trafficking victims. But their own legal battles continue: Min faces four cases, Eve three. Their bank accounts remain frozen. One case has reached court; the rest are still under investigation.
For the Sahmans, all their remaining cases are still under police investigation, not yet submitted to prosecutors.
“People who were deceived like us have to bear the consequences whilst the masterminds remain free,” Warassaya said. “And there are still so many Thais who need help the way we did.”
Nathaphob Sungkate is a feature writer from Thailand focusing on human rights issues. His work is informed by a year spent in India. Nathaphob is committed to in-depth reporting to shed light on underrepresented stories.
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