A Chinese court sentenced three criminal gang members to death Tuesday for operating a network of brutal scam hubs in Myanmar’s Kokang region, bordering China, and jailed dozens of others.
China has stepped up cooperation with Southeast Asian countries to crack down on a vast industry which has flourished in the region in recent years to defraud people of billions of dollars.
Those running these online scams are sometimes willful scammers, and other times trafficked foreign nationals — many Chinese — are tricked into working and are held in prison-like compounds.
The Quanzhou Intermediate People’s Court said in a statement Tuesday that it sentenced Wei Huairen, Chen Dawei and Liao Jingfang to death for their involvement in the “Wei family criminal gang.”
The gang was involved in crimes including drug trafficking, organizing prostitution, operating illegal casinos, telecommunications fraud and the murder of at least two Chinese citizens, the court heard.
Wei Huairen was identified as one of the group’s leaders and convicted of several crimes, including murder, the court said.
The gang’s operations grossed more than 12.2 billion yuan ($1.8 billion).
Three other members of the gang were sentenced to life in prison, while 55 others received prison sentences ranging from 24 years to three years and three months, the court heard.
Analysts describe the Wei clan as one of the “four families” running crime syndicates in Kokang.
Chinese state broadcaster CCTV on Tuesday called them “the most violent criminal force in northern Myanmar”, having created an “iron triangle of political, military and commercial criminal activity”.
It describes the gang as operating 14 fraudulent resorts “on a large scale” and luring “large numbers” of Chinese to Myanmar with false promises of high salaries.
Police also found the remains of victims bound with iron chains and with bullet holes in their skulls, CCTV said.
Members of the Wei family were first indicted in October 2025.
In January, China executed 11 people, including members of the “Ming family criminal gang.”
The following month, four members of the notorious Bai clan were executed for crimes including “fraud, intentional homicide, intentional wounding, kidnapping and extortion.”
Illegal and growing international trade
The United Nations has warned that Chinese and Southeast Asian gangs are raking in tens of billions of dollars a year through cyber scam hubs.
Sprawling compounds where internet scammers target people with romantic relationships and affairs have thrived along Myanmar’s poorly governed border during its civil war, sparked by a 2021 coup.
While Myanmar’s border region is a hotbed of illegal activity, the industry has spread to South America, Africa, the Middle East, Europe and some Pacific islands, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
A CBS News investigation in 2024 revealed massive fraud operations targeting unsuspecting Americans from scam hubs in Ghana, where young Ghanaians are lured into potentially lucrative lives of cyber fraud but quickly become tools of transnational criminal syndicates working in what has become a billion-dollar industry.
The UN estimates that hundreds of thousands of people work in fraudulent centers around the world, and Myanmar’s thriving centers have attracted many workers from Southeast Asia as well as China.
Experts say The Burmese army, which rules the country since taking power in the 2021 coup, has long turned a blind eye to fraud hubs, the profits from which are allegedly channeled to its allied militias, who are essential collaborators in their fight against the rebels.
But the junta has also faced pressure from its military backer, China, to end the fraudulent operations, angered by the fact that its citizens are participating in and being targeted by these scams.
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