China sentences five to death for building and running fraud centers for criminal gangs in Myanmar

China sentenced five people to death on Tuesday for their involvement in a violent criminal gang with fraud operations in Myanmar’s Kokang region along the border, state media reported.

Scam complexes have flourished in Myanmar’s lawless border areas, staffed by foreigners (many of them Chinese) who often say they were trafficked and forced to scam people online, as part of a multibillion-dollar illicit industry.

Beijing has stepped up cooperation with Southeast Asian nations in recent months to crack down on the complexes, and thousands of people have been repatriated to China.

The crimes of the five people sentenced Tuesday led to the “death of six Chinese citizens, the suicide of one Chinese citizen and injuries to several others,” the official Xinhua news agency said, citing a court in the southern city of Shenzhen.

“The criminals were found to have built 41 complexes in the Kokang region,” Xinhua said, adding that their activities included “telecommunication fraud, operating gambling dens, intentional homicide, organizing and coercing prostitution (and) organizing others to illegally cross national borders.”

The Shenzhen court also handed down death sentences to two other defendants with two-year reprieves, a verdict that often results in life imprisonment.

Five defendants were sentenced to life in prison, while nine others received sentences ranging from three to 20 years.

In late September, a Chinese court handed down death sentences to 16 members of a family gang with operations in Kokang, five of them given two-year pardons.

A growing illegal international business

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 complexes where Internet scammers target people with romance and business scams have thrived along Myanmar’s loosely governed border during its civil war, which was sparked by a coup of 2021.

While Myanmar’s border region has been 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.

TO News themezone Investigation Last year, massive fraud operations targeting unsuspecting Americans were revealed 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 multi-billion dollar industry.

The UN estimates that hundreds of thousands of people work in scam centers around the world, and Myanmar’s booming centers have attracted many workers from Southeast Asia and China.

The Thai prime minister announced in late October that India would repatriate 500 of its citizens from Thailand after a crackdown on a Myanmar scam hub caused workers to flee across the border.

One of the most notorious centres, KK Park, was rocked by apparent raids in late October, with hundreds of workers fleeing across the border river towards the Thai town of Mae Sot.

The unrest follows an News investigation this month that revealed rapid construction at border scam centres, despite a well-publicised crackdown in February.

More than 1,500 people from 28 countries crossed into Thailand during the raids on the KK Park facility, according to the administration of the Thai border province of Tak.

“About 500 Indians are in Mae Sot,” Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul told reporters on October 29. “The Indian government will send a plane to take them back directly.”

Many people who work in the fraud factories say they were trafficked to the centers, although analysts say some workers also go voluntarily to get attractive salary offers.

In February, some workers who fled scam centers in Myanmar and crossed the border into Thailand told Reuters news agency they were regularly beaten and tortured by their bosses.

“I received a lot of punishments, like getting electric shocks every day. I got punched every day,” Yotor, a 19-year-old Ethiopian who escaped from one of the compounds, told Reuters. “They just want to punish us, and they punish us. Because we were working 18 hours without pay, without being allowed to contact our family.”

Experts say The Myanmar military, which has ruled the country. Since taking power in the 2021 coup, he has long turned a blind eye to scam centers, whose profits are believed to go to his allied militias, who are crucial collaborators in his fight against the rebels.

But the junta has also faced pressure to end scam operations from China, its military sponsor, angry that its citizens participate in and are targeted by the scams.