Reported by Martin Young

(Excerpt shared below. To read full report, go to: https://www.occrp.org/en/news/china-sentences-16-members-of-myanmar-crime-syndicate-to-death-over-cyber-scams)

A Chinese court handed down death sentences to 16 members of the powerful Ming crime family for running sprawling scam compounds in the Kokang region of Myanmar’s Shan State, close to the Chinese border, where cyber fraud, drug trafficking, prostitution and illegal gambling flourished. 

The Wenzhou People’s Intermediate Court in Zhejiang Province found members of the ethnic Chinese family syndicate guilty of causing financial losses exceeding the equivalent of some $1.4 billion. They were also convicted on Monday for their roles in more than a dozen deaths, some of whom were Chinese nationals killed while trying to escape scam centers where they were forced to work.

Aside from running a criminal group, members of the Ming clan belonged to a militia aligned with Myanmar’s military junta, which is backed by China, analysts said. However, the arrest of the clan members and the harsh sentences show that scamming Chinese citizens crossed Beijing’s red line.  

“This is significant, as China is now plowing vast resources into helping the Myanmar military to consolidate its rule,” said Jason Tower, of the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime, a civil society organization.

However, the sentence sends “a strong signal that China will not tolerate large scale scam compounds on China’s borders. It also signals that it will not tolerate the killing of Chinese nationals by Myanmar’s ‘conflict actors,’” he told OCCRP.