She Zhijiang, a Chinese national accused of building an illicit gambling empire in South East Asia, is being extradited to China - ending his years-long battle against the order.
He has been detained in Thailand since 2022, after the Thai police arrested him acting on a Chinese request to Interpol.
China accuses She Zhijiang of running illegal online gambling rings, and this week a Thai court upheld the decision to extradite him. He arrived at a Bangkok airport on Wednesday, flanked by two security officials.
His extradition comes ahead of a landmark visit by Thailand's king to Beijing - the first state visit to China by a reigning Thai monarch and a sign of deepening ties.
She Zhijiang is one of the biggest names linked to the vast cyberscam hubs in South East Asia, which have trapped thousands of Chinese nationals and sparked a crackdown from Beijing.
One of his most notorious projects is Myanmar's Shwe Kokko city, near the Thai border. It's portrayed in promotional videos as a resort city for Chinese tourists, but its glitzy buildings are allegedly home to fraud, money laundering, and human trafficking.
During a visit to the city earlier this year, the BBC saw very few overseas visitors. Local people there said that scam businesses were still operating.
She Zhijiang and his company Yatai are sanctioned by the UK and the US for their links to rights abuses in their development.
Speaking to the BBC from prison earlier this year, She Zhijiang maintained that his company would never accept telecom fraud and scams - though he also acknowledged that scammers were likely to enter Shwe Kokko since the city was completely open to anyone.
Born in a poor village in Hunan province, China, in 1982, She Zhijiang learned computer coding at an early age before moving to the Philippines in his early twenties to venture into online gambling, which is illegal in China.
The UN estimates that hundreds of thousands of people are trapped in scam centres across South East Asia, often lured by fake job offers and held against their will, forced to engage in fraud.
Recent months have seen Beijing ramping up crackdowns on such operations, sentencing multiple members of Chinese mafia families to death.
