China has executed 11 members of a mafia family for killing 14 people and running a crime syndicate worth more than $1bn, authorities said.
The notorious Ming family, one of the “four families” of northern Myanmar, ran much of the country’s criminal underbelly – from scam centres to illegal gambling dens within the town of Laukkaing in Myanmar.
In September, 11 members, including Ming Guoping, Ming Zhenzhen, Zhou Weichang, Wu Hongming and Luao Jianzhang, were sentenced to death for a host of crimes.
They had been found guilty of killing 14 Chinese citizens, as well as illegal detention and fraud.
The Wenzhou city Intermediate People’s Court announced the execution in a statement on Thursday morning.
Historically the Mings had run their operation from Laukkaing – transforming the town into a glitzy hub full of casinos and red-light districts.
There they would traffic people to run online scams, with hundreds of thousands of people being brought in, according to the United Nations.
The scams had raked in more than 10bn yuan (£1bn) in the eight years leading up to their arrest in 2013.
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Members of the group were detained in 2013 after Chinese authorities pressured authorities in the border areas shared with Myanmar to crack down on scams.
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After being sentenced to death in September the group filed an appeal, which was rejected.
Myanmar’s military claimed the family’s patriarch, Ming Xuechang, took his own life in 2023 to avoid being captured.
Xuechang had run one of Laukkaing’s most notorious scam centres, Crouching Tiger Villa, which was primarily staffed by people who had been kidnapped.
Scam parks have grown to an industrial-scale business in Southeast Asia, especially in Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos.
Authorities in the region face growing international pressure from China, the US and other nations to address the proliferation of criminal activity.
In recent years, China executed more people than any other country – sometimes more than every other country in the world combined.
