It wasn't that long ago that if you wanted a new simcard for you phone you simply walked into any tens of thousands of different stores and just did so. Malls in bigger cities would have long lists of available numbers that they had in stock for people that were seeking to obtain particular numbers. If you wanted to have a dozen sim cards for any reason, you could go ahead and do so.
The company names have changed over the years but generally speaking there always end up being 3 large companies which right now are Dtac AIS and TrueMove. These days it seems as though they no longer offer specials because changing simcards is a massive pain in the ass. If you want to change numbers you have to go somewhere with your passport, fill out all sorts of forms, they do something on their end and in the end you are allowed to have a simcard. You used to just walk into a store, buy one, and start using it immediately.
There are various reasons that the government gives for why this change was implemented and the one most commonly used was that cheap mobile phones have been used in the past as a remote detonation device for bombs planted in certain places. The area of Yala, which is still to this day a bit of a separatist area, became a bit famous about a decade ago because of the regular bombing that was taking place with IED's. Other examples of why sim cards can't just be bought and sold without registration were given but I always had my suspicions that what was really going on is that the companies that control telecom here in Thailand didn't want the people to have the easy ability to switch to another provider. You still CAN switch to another provider if you want to, but it is a rather grueling process to go through and most people just stay with who their carrier is even if the other guys are offering a better deal for your specific needs.
Most things in Thailand are corrupt, so why not one of the most profitable industries that exists in the world? Seems pretty likely to me. By the way the bombs didn't stop once it was necessary to register sim cards, the people just reverted to other means. What really squashed the unrest in Yala was a rather brutal crusade to completely eliminate the "rebels" and this was carried out in a very strong-armed way to let the people there realize that no, you can't just make your own country because you feel like it.
That's kind of another story and one that I don't know a great deal about but let's move on to why I started talking about this in the first place: I wanted to get another sim card not long ago because my phone supports two of them and it took me many hours in the shopping mall in order to get this done. In one of the official shops operated by TrueMove, i was told I needed to get a police report in order to obtain more than one sim card, another shop said nothing of the sort but it still took hours of sitting in this place in order to in the end get my $4 sim card.
So when I heard the news about a fraudulent call center being busted in Bangkok that was operated by Chinese nationals I was a bit astounded to find out that this very organized operation had, among other things, 208,652 SIM cards. How in the absolute hell would someone get that many SIM cards without someone knowing about it?
As usual, the police pose for pictures showing them doing their jobs. They love this part of it and I guarantee that the guy in front is some high-ranking officer with political aspirations... the people in the background are "hanger-ons" hoping for a bit of influence to enter their lives in the future.
To me, this bust shows one thing: It actually isn't that difficult for someone criminally minded to get a hold of as many sim cards as they want to. Normal people like you and I though, we have sit through several hours of grilling and getting treated like we are trying to game the system when all we really want to do is use the 2nd sim card slot in our phones.
I don't know nor do I care what sort of fraud was going on at this busted call center but honestly, it wouldn't surprise me if the reason why these Chinese people were able to get so many SIM cards was specifically because the police were helping them do so. Perhaps the criminals just didn't pay off the police enough and therefore they got raided. This of course is raw speculation on my part but how do we explain that a group of just 5 Chinese nationals were able to get more than 40,000 SIM cards yet I can barely get 2?