Mizzima/AFP-Sept 30
A Chinese court sentenced to death on Monday 16 members of a family-run criminal gang that established deadly scam centers in Myanmar’s Kokang region on the border with China, among other crimes. Scam compounds have flourished in Myanmar’s lawless borderlands, staffed by foreigners — many of them Chinese — who say they were trafficked and forced to swindle people online, part of a multibillion-dollar illicit industry.
Beijing has stepped up cooperation with Southeast Asian nations in recent months to crack down on the compounds, and thousands of people have been repatriated to China. The Wenzhou Intermediate People’s Court said on Monday that a family-run criminal organization had engaged in cyber fraud, drug trafficking, organizing prostitution, setting up casinos, and other crimes from 2015. They had “relied on armed force” to establish multiple compounds in Kokang, the court said in a statement posted on social media. The court said the group had killed 14 people, including 10 involved in fraud who had tried to escape from the group or disobeyed its management..It cited one incident in October 2023, when the accused “opened fire” on people at a scam compound to prevent them from being transferred back to China. In April, the United Nations warned that Chinese and Southeast Asian gangs are raking in tens of billions of dollars a year through cyber scam centers. The UN estimates that hundreds of thousands of people are working in scam centers globally. By April this year, around 7,000 people from at least two dozen countries had been repatriated from Myanmar. Read more at:
