Bank of Thailand Freezes 3m Accounts, Sets Daily Transfer Limits to Curb Fraud

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.

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.)

Even if the anti-fraud motif is genuine, that’s a pretty extreme amount of control. Not that it’s in any way strange coming from Thailand. Foreign exchange and capital inflow and outflow are already controlled.

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].

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[1] https://www.fincen.gov/resources/statutes-and-regulations/ba...

[2] https://www.dollartimes.com/inflation/inflation.php?amount=1...

Good name for an AI agent orchestration framework.

Thailand doesn't want foreigners holding accounts. They've cranked up the requirements over time. It used to be possible to open an account as a tourist and now you're lucky to be able to get one on any visa that isn't attached to a work permit or PR.

As emergency measures usually are.

  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.

The Wikipedia on long and short scales[1][2] for the root of the problem.

[0] https://xkcd.com/927/

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales

[2] https://grammarhow.com/m-vs-mm-million/

> Transactions that are computationally impractical to reverse would protect sellers from fraud, and routine escrow mechanisms could easily be implemented to protect buyers.

Emphasis added.

It is conceptually possible to create a crypto "credit card". But given that existing transactions are already slow, expensive, and complicated to integrate - I can't see it being attractive.

There's also the issue of trust. Escrow merchants need to be highly-trusted by both sides. They also need regulation and insurance. Those things are all in short-supply in cryptoland.

  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.

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.