/ CBS/AFP
A Chinese court sentenced three members of a criminal gang to death on Tuesday for operating a network of brutal scam centers in Myanmar's Kokang region on the border with China, while jailing dozens more.
China has stepped up cooperation with Southeast Asian nations to crack down on a vast industry that has flourished in the region in recent years to fleece people out of billions of dollars.
Those conducting the online scams are sometimes willing con artists, and other times trafficked foreign nationals -- many Chinese -- tricked themselves into work and held in prison-like compounds.
Quanzhou Intermediate People's Court said in a statement on Tuesday that it had 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 said.
Wei Huairen was identified as one of the group's leaders and found guilty of several crimes including murder, the court said.
The gang's operations netted more than 12.2 billion yuan ($1.8 billion).
Another three gang members were handed life sentences, while 55 more were given prison terms ranging from 24 years to three years and three months, the court said.
Analysts describe the Wei clan as one of the "four families" running crime syndicates in Kokang.
China's state broadcaster CCTV on Tuesday called them the "most violent criminal force in northern Myanmar", having created an "iron triangle of political, military, and business criminal activities."
It described the gang as operating 14 "large-scale" scam compounds and luring "large numbers" of Chinese to Myanmar through fake promises of high wages.
Police had also discovered 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 injury, kidnapping, extortion."
A growing, illegal international business
The United Nations warned that Chinese and Southeast Asian gangs are raking in tens of billions of dollars a year through cyber scam centers.
Sprawling compounds where internet tricksters target people with romance and business cons have thrived along Myanmar's loosely governed border during its civil war, which was sparked by a 2021 coup.
While Myanmar's border region has been a hotbed of the illegal activity, the industry has spread to South America, Africa, the Middle East, Europe and some Pacific Islands, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.
A CBS News investigation in 2024 revealed the massive fraud operations targeting unsuspecting Americans from scam centers in Ghana, where young Ghanaians are lured into potentially lucrative lives of cyber fraud, but quickly become tools of transnational criminal syndicates that work in what's become a billion-dollar industry.
The U.N. estimates that hundreds of thousands of people are working in scam centers globally, and the flourishing centers in Myanmar have drawn many workers from Southeast Asia as well as China.
Experts say Myanmar's military, which has ruled over the country since seizing power in the 2021 coup, has long turned a blind eye to the scam centers, profits from which are believed to go to its militia allies, who are crucial collaborators in their fight against rebels.
But the junta has also faced pressure to shut down scam operations from its military backer China, irked at its citizens both participating in and being targeted by the scams
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