SA KAEO: Three Chinese nationals using phone bots to falsely boost page views on websites were arrested when police raided a rented house in Aranyaprathet district.
They were arrested on charges including working without work permits.
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There were hunded of smartphones racked on metal frames and connected to computer monitors. A search found thousands of unused SIM cards. The police raid followed a tip-off that illegal migrants were living there.
The Chinese nationals Wang Dong, 33, and Niu Bang, 25, were detained when immigration police searched their house in tambon Ban Mai Nong Sai.
During the raid another Chinese man, Ni Wenjin, 32, walked in. He lived next door. A subsequent search of this house also found a large number of SIM cards.
Speaking through an Chinese interpreter, Mr Ni said they were not running a call-centre scam, a police initially suspected.
They had been hired to increase page views of products, and had been doing it for three months.
The hundreds of smartphones were used as bots to falsely increase readership numbers of the pages.
