to the United States. The 33-year-old man was arrested at a luxury resort on the island of Phuket on Friday, local media and the AFP news agency reported. Police made the arrest after a tip-off from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), AFP reported. “The FBI said he was wanted for committing fraud against Americans of about $10m”, Suriya Poungsombat, a representative of the national immigration police, said.

He told AFP that the FBI said that the suspect had left Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and travelled to Thailand on Wednesday. After his arrest, the man was sent to an immigration detention centre in the capital, Bangkok, and is awaiting extradition to the US, he said. Southeast Asia has emerged as a hotspot for cyberscam operations in recent years with organised criminal groups using casinos, hotels and fortified compounds in the region as bases to carry out sophisticated online cons.

Local media reported that from 2022 to 2026, the suspect had contacted victims through dating apps and social media. They reported he allegedly hired models to contact victims, lure them into relationships and then encourage them to invest in fake platforms with false profit projections. Numerous victims were identified in the US. According to a 2025 report from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, foreign workers in the UAE have been “lured into scam work in Southeast Asia”, suggesting “Dubai is becoming a global hub for recruitment and trafficking linked to the cyber-enabled fraud industry”. (Al Jazeera/EPA)