Thailand seeks arrest of Chinese businessman in crypto laundering probe

Thailand has issued an arrest warrant for Chinese businessman Wang Yicheng, accusing him of helping run a network that laundered money from scams and online gambling through illegal cryptocurrency mining. Police Major Woranan Srilam, a spokesman for the Department of Special Investigation, said Wang had already been charged in November with theft and under the Computer Crimes Act, and investigators believe he fled Thailand.

The case centers on the mechanics of the alleged scheme as much as on the flight of one suspect. The DSI said the mining network illicitly used about 950 million baht, or roughly $28 million, worth of electricity, a scale that makes the case one of Thailand’s largest recent illegal mining investigations. The agency said the wider case includes four unnamed Chinese nationals and four Myanmar nationals, and described Wang as a former leader of a Thai-Chinese trade association who played a central role in the group.

Wang’s name had already surfaced in a 2023 investigation into cross-border crypto flows. That reporting said more than $90 million in cryptocurrency moved into an account in his name between January 2021 and November 2022, including at least $9.1 million from a wallet linked by TRM Labs to pig-butchering scams. U.S. authorities later seized about $500,000 in cryptocurrency from an account in Wang’s name in June 2023 after funds stolen from a victim in Massachusetts were traced there. Those transactions are central to the present case because they show how scam proceeds can be moved, parked and disguised through crypto infrastructure before being dispersed across borders.

Thailand’s move comes as Southeast Asian authorities confront a fast-adapting criminal economy. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has said cyberfraud networks in the region are shifting operations across borders in response to crackdowns, while UN reporting has described scam compounds as part of an industry generating tens of billions of dollars a year and sustained by trafficked workers. Local Thai reports in June 2026 also said investigators were widening a separate probe into a network tied to more than 10 billion baht a year and thousands of seized mining rigs.

For Thai investigators, Wang’s case sits at the intersection of electricity theft, cyberfraud and money laundering. It also shows how illegal mining can function not as a source of legitimate blockchain validation, but as cover for moving illicit funds through jurisdictions where political ties, border crossings and weak enforcement links still create openings.