BEIJING: A Chinese court sentenced three members of a criminal gang to death on Tuesday for running a network of brutal scam centres in Myanmar’s Kokang region, near the Chinese border, while handing prison terms to dozens of others.
China has stepped up cooperation with Southeast Asian nations to crack down on a vast criminal industry that has flourished across the region in recent years, defrauding victims of billions of dollars.
Those carrying out online scams are sometimes willing participants, while others are foreign nationals, many of them Chinese, who have been trafficked after being lured into the work and held in prison-like compounds.
The 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, organising 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 offences, including murder, the court said.
The gang’s operations generated more than 12.2 billion yuan (US$1.8 billion).
Three other gang members were sentenced to life imprisonment, while another 55 received 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” that run criminal syndicates in Kokang.
China’s state broadcaster CCTV on Tuesday described the group as the “most violent criminal force in northern Myanmar”, saying it had established an “iron triangle of political, military, and business criminal activities”.
The broadcaster said the gang operated 14 “large-scale” scam compounds and lured “large numbers” of Chinese nationals to Myanmar with false promises of high wages.
Police had also discovered the remains of victims who had been bound with iron chains and had bullet holes in their skulls, CCTV reported.
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 and extortion.