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A Chinese court handed down death sentences to 16 members of the powerful Ming crime family for running sprawling scam compounds in the Kokang region of Myanmar’s Shan State, close to the Chinese border, where cyber fraud, drug trafficking, prostitution and illegal gambling flourished.
The Wenzhou People’s Intermediate Court in Zhejiang Province found members of the ethnic Chinese family syndicate guilty of causing financial losses exceeding the equivalent of some $1.4 billion. They were also convicted on Monday for their roles in more than a dozen deaths, some of whom were Chinese nationals killed while trying to escape scam centers where they were forced to work.
Aside from running a criminal group, members of the Ming clan belonged to a militia aligned with Myanmar’s military junta, which is backed by China, analysts said. However, the arrest of the clan members and the harsh sentences show that scamming Chinese citizens crossed Beijing's red line.
“This is significant, as China is now plowing vast resources into helping the Myanmar military to consolidate its rule,” said Jason Tower, of the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime, a civil society organization.
However, the sentence sends “a strong signal that China will not tolerate large scale scam compounds on China’s borders. It also signals that it will not tolerate the killing of Chinese nationals by Myanmar's ‘conflict actors,’” he told OCCRP.
Myanmar’s military has been fighting an array of ethnic insurgent groups for decades, and the conflict has intensified since it seized full control of the government in February 2021. Military authorities did not respond to requests for comment.
According to China’s Supreme People’s Procuratorate, 11 members of the Ming group were sentenced to death immediately, while five others received suspended death sentences. Twenty-three additional gang members were given prison terms ranging from 24 years to life.
The judgment also specifically pointed out that the Ming syndicate’s scam enterprises had directly caused the deaths of at least 16 individuals and numerous injuries, including those working on these premises who attempted to escape. As such, the Ming criminal group and its ringleaders were also guilty of homicide and intentional injury.
Those issued death sentences include the group’s high-profile ringleaders, including Ming Guoping, and Ming Zhenzhen, who are the son and granddaughter of Ming Xuechang, the group’s ringleader, who reportedly ran the local police force. During their arrest in November 2023 Ming Xuechang shot himself and died later in hospital, Myanmar authorities announced at the time.
The verdict is the harshest in a series of prosecutions targeting Southeast Asia–based scam operations, which the United Nations estimates siphoned between $18 billion and $37 billion from victims in East and Southeast Asia last year alone.
A spokesperson for the activist group Justice For Myanmar noted that the Ming family’s influence stretched beyond Kokang’s criminal economy.
"The Mings were key figures in both the Kokang cyber scam industry and local Myanmar military institutions, the Kokang Border Guard Force and the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party,” Yadanar Maung, told OCCRP in an email.
She explained that such international action “cannot succeed without targeting the root cause of cyber scams and human trafficking — the Myanmar military, which needs funds to continue its campaign of terror against the people.”
Yadanar Maung called for sanctions to be expanded against the junta as well as the individuals and businesses behind Myanmar’s still thriving cyber scam industry.
