Police nab Russian ‘gangster’
Police have detained a Russian national believed to be the leader of a transnational gang operating under the “Dark Web”, a network of unindexed sites that exist across the web.
Sergey Sergeyvich Medvediev, who fled to Thailand six years ago, was nabbed last Friday, a source revealed yesterday.
In response to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation’s request for cooperation, the Crime Suppression Division (CSD) conducted an investigation and found Mr Medvediev, 31, was in Bangkok, the source said.
A team of 30 CSD officers last Friday raided an apartment at the City Gate building in the Sukhumvit area and detained him, the source said.
CSD police seized a notebook computer and several documents from the apartment, the source said.
Over the past six years, Mr Medvediev had left and re-entered Thailand several times and had lived with his Thai wife over the past year, the source said.
CSD investigators found the Russian suspect was trading illegal products online using the Bit coin currency, said the source.
He added that, judging by the the evidence obtained during the Feb 2 raid, he had more than 100,000 Bitcoin, equivalent to nearly 100 million baht.
Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) chief Thitiraj Nhongharnpitak confirmed the raid occurred.
He declined to provide further details about the operation, saying it was an international police matter and more details would be forthcoming.
According to the source, the FBI and Italian police on Tuesday seized a computer server owned by the gang in Italy but no suspect was arrested in the operation.
The FBI will call a press conference in the US about Tuesday’s operation, said the source, adding the FBI is expanding the investigation into the matter in several more countries.
The gang allegedly sells narcotic drugs, illegal weapons, stolen credit card PINs, protected wild animals and illegally obtained government documents, the source said.
The detained Russian suspect wasn’t in the CSD’s custody and it remained unconfirmed whether he was being detained by the Immigration Bureau or the Special Branch Bureau, the source said.
On Tuesday, similar crackdowns on t he criminal network were believed to have been carried out in 15 countries, aiming to detain 18 more suspects wanted by the FBI that had been pursuing the gang since 2014.
The bureau had previously detained 32 suspects involved with the network and expanded their probe, the source said.