China has executed 11 members of a notorious mafia family that ran scam centres in Myanmar along its north-eastern border, state media report.
The Ming family members were sentenced in September for various crimes including homicide, illegal detention, fraud and operating gambling dens by a court in China’s Zhejiang province.
The Mings were one of many clans that ran the town of Laukkaing, transforming an impoverished backwater town into a flashy hub of casinos and red-light districts.
Their scam empire came crashing down in 2023, when they were detained and handed over to China by ethnic militias that had taken control of Laukkaing during an escalation in their conflict with Myanmar’s army.
With these executions Beijing is sending a message of deterrence to would-be scammers. But the business has now moved to Myanmar’s border with Thailand, and to Cambodia and Laos, where China has much less influence.
Hundreds of thousands of people have been trafficked to run online scams in Myanmar and elsewhere in South East Asia, according to estimates by the UN. Among them are thousands of Chinese people, and their victims who they swindle billions of dollars from are mainly Chinese too.
Frustrated by the Myanmar military’s refusal to stop the scam business, from which it was almost certainly profiting, Beijing tacitly backed an offensive by an ethnic insurgent alliance in Shan State in late 2023. The alliance captured significant territory from the military and overran Laukkaing, a key border town.
Who are the Ming family?
The eleven members of the Ming family are the first of the Myanmar scam bosses to be executed by China.
But they will not be the last. Five members of the Bai family were also sentenced to death in November, and the trials of two other groups of defendants from the Wei and the Liu families have not yet concluded.
The Ming family’s trial was held behind closed doors, although more than 160 people were allowed to attend their sentencing hearing last year, including families of victims.
The Ming mafia’s scam operations and gambling dens brought in more than 10bn yuan ($1.4bn; £1bn) between 2015 and 2023, according to China’s highest court, which rejected their appeals in November. Their crimes resulted in the deaths of 14 Chinese citizens and injuries to many others, the court said.
More than 20 others from the Ming family were given jail sentences in September ranging from five years to life. Ming Xuechang, the clan’s patriarch, killed himself in 2023 while trying to avoid detention, Myanmar’s military had said back then.
The confessions of those who were arrested were aired in state media documentaries, to emphasise Chinese authorities’ resolveto eradicate scam networks.
The Mings were among a handful of Godfather-esque families who rose to power in Laukkaing in the early 2000s. This was after the town’s then warlord was ousted in a military operation led by Min Aung Hlaing, who became the leader of Myanmar’s military government after the 2021 coup.
The head of the family, Ming Xuechang, ran one of the most infamous of Laukkaing’s scam centres, Crouching Tiger Villa.
At first gambling and prostitution were the main sources of income for these families, but they eventually started online fraud, staffed mostly by people who were kidnapped and forced to run these scams.
Within the walls of the sprawling, well-guarded compounds was a culture of violence. Beatings and torture were routine, according to testimonies collected from freed workers.
Source: BBC
