The Thai Securities and Exchange Commission and cyber police have conducted a raid on a World (WLD) exchange and iris scanning location in Bangkok, resulting in the arrest of suspects for operating an unlicensed digital asset business.
SEC officials and officers from the police Cyber Crime Investigation Bureau (CCIB) carried out the operation on Friday to protect the public from potential scams and money laundering, the regulator said in a statement on its website.
The statement did not say where in Bangkok the raid took place or how many people were arrested.
Under Section 66 of the Digital Asset Businesses Law, any person who operates a digital asset business without a licence could face a prison term of 2-5 years and/or a fine of 200,000 to 500,000 baht.
‘This collaboration will enhance the effectiveness of law enforcement in prosecuting and suppressing unlicensed digital asset businesses, while protecting users from lack of legal protection and mitigating risks of scams and money laundering,’ said Jomkwan Kongsakul, the SEC deputy secretary-general.
World (formerly Worldcoin) is a digital ID project championed by Sam Altman, one of the founders of OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT.
People who complete iris verification at one of the project’s Orb scanners receive a WLD digital token as an incentive for participating. According to company data, the platform had 102 Orb locations in Thailand, making it one of its largest markets in Asia.
The SEC earlier advised the public to be careful when exchanging WLD coins with unlicensed operators.
Tools for Humanity Thailand, the local operator, decided earlier to suspend further expansion of its iris-scanning locations in order to address concerns that Thai authorities had raised about the safety of biometric data.
The World project in Thailand is also controversial because of possible links to a Cambodia-based scam network that has been the subject of numerous investigative reports.
A recent investigation by Whale Hunting found that Tools for Humanity ‘unwittingly became entangled with a criminal dirty money network’ by teaming up with the cryptocurrency exchange KuCoin. The latter appears to have used its partnership with World to give its operations legitimacy in Thailand.
The Thai SEC has advised the public and investors to exercise caution when using services from unlicensed digital asset business operators, as they will not receive legal protection and are at risk of being scammed, as well as exposed to money laundering risks.
The regulator maintains a list of unauthorised individuals outside SEC supervision in the Investor Alert section of its website.