A Chinese court has sentenced 11 members of the notorious Ming family to death for operating scam centers in Myanmar, according to Chinese state media. Many of the family’s members were found guilty of engaging in criminal activities, with others receiving lengthy prison sentences. The Ming family was associated with one of the four clans that transformed the quiet town of Laukkaing, near the China-Myanmar border, into a hub for gambling, drug trafficking, and scams.
In 2023, Myanmar initiated a crackdown on these activities, arresting numerous members of these families and transferring them to Chinese authorities. A total of 39 members of the Ming family were sentenced on Monday in Wenzhou, a city in eastern China, as reported by Chinese state broadcaster CCTV.
In addition to the 11 members who received death sentences, five others received death sentences with a two-year suspension. Eleven individuals were sentenced to life imprisonment, while the remaining defendants were given prison terms ranging from five to 24 years. The court determined that since 2015, the Ming family and various other criminal groups had been involved in activities such as telecommunications fraud, illegal gambling, drug trafficking, and prostitution.
Their gambling and scam operations generated over 10 billion yuan (approximately $1.4 billion or £1 billion), according to the court. Other estimates suggested that the casinos operated by the four families were processing several billion dollars each year. The court also established that the Ming family and associated criminal groups were responsible for the deaths of several workers in scam centers, including incidents where workers were shot to prevent them from returning to China.
Initially developed to take advantage of Chinese demand for gambling, which is illegal in China and many other neighbouring countries, Laukkaing’s casinos evolved into a lucrative front for money laundering, trafficking, and dozens of scam centres.
It was seen as the engine-room of what the UN has dubbed the “scamdemic”, which has seen more than 100,000 foreign nationals, many of them Chinese, being lured to scam centres where they are effectively imprisoned and forced to work long hours, running sophisticated online fraud operations targeting victims all over the world.
The Ming family were once one of the most powerful in Myanmar’s Shan State, and ran scam centres in Laukkaing which held at least 10,000 workers. The most notorious was a compound known as Crouching Tiger Villa, where workers were routinely beaten and tortured.
Then, two years ago, an alliance of insurgent groups launched an offensive which drove the Myanmar military out of large areas of Shan State, and took control of Laukkaing. China, which holds significant influence over these groups, was assumed to have given the offensive a green light.
Ming Xuechang, the family patriarch, reportedly killed himself; other family members were handed over to the Chinese authorities. Some have made remorseful confessions. Thousands of those working in the scam centres have also been handed over to the Chinese police.
With these sentences China is signalling its determination to deal harshly with the scam business on its border. Pressure from Beijing also forced Thailand to take action against scam centres along its border with Myanmar earlier this year. Despite this, the business has adapted, with much of it now operating in Cambodia, though it is still prevalent in Myanmar.
Source: bbc.com
