China has executed 11 members of a notorious mafia family that ran scam centers in Myanmar along its north-eastern border, according to state media reports.
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 transformed the town of Laukkaing into a hub of casinos and red-light districts, but their empire crumbled in 2023 when ethnic militias overran their operations and detained them.
The executions serve as a message to deter other would-be scammers; however, much of the scam business has now shifted to regions of Myanmar bordering Thailand, as well as Cambodia and Laos, where Chinese jurisdiction is less influential.
According to UN estimates, hundreds of thousands of individuals have been trafficked to run online scams in Myanmar and South East Asia, mainly targeting Chinese citizens.
Frustrated by the Myanmar military's inaction against these scams, China tacitly endorsed a rebel group's push against Myanmar's military in late 2023, leading to significant territorial gains.
The Ming family is the first of the Myanmar scam bosses to face execution, with the sentence indicating a broader crackdown on similar criminal activities in the region. Following the Mings, other mob families like the Bai family are also facing severe penalties.
Originally, the Ming family's operations, which amassed over 10 billion yuan ($1.4 billion) from 2015 to 2023, were centered around gambling and prostitution, later expanding into online fraud utilizing kidnapped workers. The culture within their operations was marked by violence and coercion, as discovered from testimonies of released victims.
