China Executes 16, Sentences 41,000 in Myanmar Telecom Fraud

(MENAFN) Chinese courts handed down sentences to more than 41,000 individuals last year — all repatriated from northern Myanmar — for their roles in large-scale telecom and online fraud operations, including 16 who were executed, state-run media reported Thursday.

Among the most prominent prosecutions, the infamous Ming and Bai family criminal organizations have been fully dismantled, media reported, citing the Supreme People's Court (SPC). A total of 39 senior members of the two gangs received life sentences or harsher punishments, among them the 16 executed this year.

According to the SPC, the syndicates had constructed multiple fortified compounds in Myanmar's Kokang region, enlisting financiers and armed enforcers to orchestrate sweeping telecom fraud, illicit gambling, and violent criminal operations. The schemes inflicted losses exceeding 10 billion yuan ($1.4 billion) and left numerous Chinese citizens dead or injured.

The scale of China's broader judicial response has been staggering. Since 2021, Chinese courts have closed more than 159,000 first-instance fraud-related cases, resulting in sentences for upward of 338,000 defendants. Though prosecutions surged through 2023 and 2024, the pace eased in 2025 as Beijing intensified law enforcement and judicial pressure on the networks.

More than 7,600 Chinese nationals suspected of fraud involvement were repatriated last year alone. In February, China, Myanmar, and Thailand launched a coordinated joint operation to extradite fraud suspects from Myanmar's Myawaddy region.

The proliferation of scam compounds across Myanmar's loosely governed border areas has accelerated since the military coup of 2021, which plunged the country into civil war and created vast ungoverned spaces that criminal networks have moved swiftly to exploit.

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