New Delhi: Eleven members of the Ming family, who ran online scam centres in Myanmar along its north-eastern border, have been executed by China. At least 23 other convicts were sentenced to between five years and life imprisonment.
The Ming family criminal group—first among the alleged kingpins of the fraud to face execution—was responsible for the deaths of 14 Chinese citizens and injuries to several others from 2015 to 2023. The members were sentenced to death in September after all of them were found guilty of illegal detention, homicide, and fraud.
Two of the defendants had appealed to the Chinese Supreme Court in the matter, but the original verdict was upheld. A spokesperson for the Chinese foreign ministry told CNN that China will continue to “intensify efforts to eradicate the scourge of gambling and fraud”.
Casino scam
The Ming family allegedly controlled Laukkai, a town in Myanmar’s northern Shan State near the Chinese border. It became a hub for gambling, drugs, and call centre scams.
It all started in 2015, and for the next decade, the Ming family ‘profited more than 10 billion Yuan’, around Rs 1 trillion.
The workers would engage in online scams, romance and investment fraud, fake customer service calls and online gambling fraud schemes. The scam centres were spreading, affecting thousands of Chinese nationals who were lured in with fake jobs and coerced into running fraud operations.
In 2023, Beijing cracked down on the area after years of complaints by relatives of trafficked scam centre workers. Laukkai, the capital of Kokang, is a self-administered zone. It is an area infamous for weak governance, something the Ming family took advantage of.
The Chinese government took responsibility for the matter after repeatedly pushing the Myanmar military to stop the scam. The BBC reported that the military was certainly profiting from them.
A team of 10,000 people worked from a mansion named Crouching Tiger Villa, situated in Kokang. Behind the huge fortified walls, armed men would protect the compound. The workers in their testimonies have talked about regular beatings, torture and violence.
Further problems rose for the group when four people were killed in an open fire incident that took place inside the scam compound. Later, the Chinese state media reported that the group were taking the workers under armed guards after being tipped off about a raid by police.
In 2023 November, China issued arrest warrants and posted bounty rewards from $14,ooo to 70,000 for their capture.
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Court proceedings
The Ming family case was heard in a closed-door room, with more than 160 people present, including the family of the victims.
The family has risen to be the most powerful and notorious mafia-like crime syndicate. Among four clans, the Ming family have controlled the region’s economy and local government. The families established an alleged multi-billion-dollar criminal empire.
The families started rising to power in the early 2000s, after the town’s warlord was ousted in a military operation led by Min Aung Hlaing, who later became the leader of Myanmar’s military government after the 2021 coup.
Ming Xuechang, the head of the family, oversaw all the movements in the centre. He operated from the villa. Xuechnag later died by suicide in 2023 to avoid capture by Chinese authorities.
The confessions of the Ming families were aired in state media documentaries, with the motto to spread the message that Chinese authorities are determined to eradicate the scam networks. After the Ming family, China also arrested five members of the Bai family, and last year in November, they were sentenced to death. The Wei and Liu families, the BBC reported, are still not over with their trials. All three families were a part of a crime syndicate clan in Myanmar.
(Edited by Saptak Datta)