Former Chinese flight attendant turns human smuggler on Thai-Malaysian border

Thai immigration police have arrested a 34-year-old Chinese former flight attendant accused of brokering illegal border crossings between Thailand and Malaysia for Chinese nationals.

The woman, identified by police only as Pan, was among five people arrested in a single-day operation in the southern city of Hat Yai and at the Padang Besar immigration checkpoint on the Malaysian border, Khaosod English reported on Oct. 15.

Under questioning, Pan told police she had worked as a flight attendant for an airline in China before quitting to study in Thailand.

Police allege she then worked as a coordinator for Chinese nationals traveling in and out of Thailand through both legal and illegal channels.

Officers had learned that two Chinese men had crossed into Thailand from Malaysia through an informal border route in Narathiwat Province and were staying at a hotel in central Hat Yai before traveling farther inland, police said.

As the men waited in the hotel's parking lot, Pan arrived in a hired vehicle to collect them, and officers stepped in to check their passports.

The two men admitted entering Thailand through a natural border crossing, according to police, who said Pan had been instructed to collect them, arrange passports for them and take them to Bangkok.

Investigators also found that Pan had earlier taken a 25-year-old woman, identified as Mila, to Hat Yai airport, where she was to be handed to a local broker for an illegal crossing into Malaysia, Bangkok Post reported.

Officers followed the car that picked Mila up and had it stopped at the Padang Besar checkpoint. The driver, a 39-year-old Thai man identified only as Isra, had hidden her on the back seat beneath clothing, police said.

Immigration officers pose with two suspects at the Padang Besar immigration checkpoint in Songkhla Province, Thailand. Photo courtesy of Songkhla Immigration Police

Mila at first insisted she had entered Thailand legally, showing officers a picture of travel documents that belonged to a friend who looked like her.

Pan and Isra face charges of helping or sheltering foreigners who entered Thailand illegally so they could evade arrest. The three foreigners are charged with entering and staying in Thailand without permission.

Police first listed Mila as a citizen of Vanuatu, a Pacific island nation, but later said she was in fact Chinese.

One of the two men was also carrying a Mexican passport, and Pan's phone held pictures of Vanuatu passports belonging to several Chinese nationals. Police are investigating whether the group is linked to a network trading in nationality documents.

Vanuatu's citizenship program lets foreigners acquire a passport with a minimum investment of $130,000, Reuters reported in December 2024, when the European Union revoked the country's visa-free access over the scheme. It was the first time the bloc had done so over a "golden passport" program.

Chinese nationals were the largest group of buyers in 2020, receiving around 1,200 of the roughly 2,200 passports Vanuatu issued through the scheme that year, according to government documents obtained by The Guardian.

Earlier this month, police in Hat Yai arrested three Thais after a 40-km pursuit as they tried to move a Chinese man who had crossed illegally from Cambodia through Thailand to Malaysia, the Bangkok Post reported.