A Chinese court has sentenced nearly 40 members of the same notorious crime family after a major trial – with 11 of them being handed the death penalty.
Dozens of members of the infamous Ming family have been found guilty of running wide-ranging gambling, drug and scam centres worth about £1billion (10billion yuan) in total.
The Ming family were part of one of four clans running Laukkaing, a small town in Myanmar close to the border with China, who turned it into a hub for criminal activity.
Since 2015 the town had been used as a base for telecommunication fraud, illegal casinos, drug trafficking, and prosecution.
But authorities in Myanmar finally cracked down on the scams, arresting several Ming family members and handing them over to the Chinese authorities in 2023.
Now 39 mafia members have been sentenced for their crimes in the eastern city of Wenzhou, the BBC reports.
Some 11 Ming family members including Ming Guoping, Ming Zhenzhen, and Zhou Weichang received death sentences.
Another 11 were jailed for life, five received death sentences with two-year suspensions, and the rest were handed sentences ranging from five to 24 years in jail.
Two-year suspended death sentences are often converted to life in prison.
Laukkaing’s illegal casinos were set up to take advantage of China’s demand for gambling, which is illegal there and in many neighbouring countries.
But the casinos evolved into a front for money laundering, trafficking, and dozens of scam centres.
These scam centres, home to thousands of workers, involved imprisoning workers and forcing them to work long hours, as well as beating or torturing them.
Meanwhile these workers would be running sophisticated online fraud operations, such as romance scams, targeting people all over the world.
The local police force, meanwhile, was also under the control of the Ming family, acting as little more than a private militia enforcing their rule.
The court found that the Ming family and other criminal groups were responsible for the deaths of several workers. In one incident, a number of workers were shot to stop them returning to China.
Back in September 2023, China ramped up pressure on all groups to shut down scam centres and allow their workers to leave, even if they were not based on Chinese soil.
China started joint operations or worked with local police forces in Myanmar and Thailand to try and end criminal gangs operating scam centres near their borders.
The Ming family had resisted this pressure, not wanting to give up their casinos which were thought to making several billion dollars’ profit every year.
They may have thought they were protected, due to their close ties with the Myanmar military.
But by late October an alliance of insurgent groups, backed by China, drove the Myanmar military out of large areas of Shan State and took control of Laukkaing.
And by November, China issued arrest warrants for several members of the Ming family on suspicion of fraud, murder, and illegal detention.
Ming family members and thousands of those working in the scam centres were handed over to Chinese police.
The Ming family patriarch, Ming Xuechang, reportedly took his own life.
Some of the family members confessed to their crimes in court and appeared remorseful – but their strong sentences are likely demonstrating China’s determination to end the scam businesses along its borders.
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