China sentences 5 to death for building, running criminal gang fraud centers in Myanmar’s lawless borderlands

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 compounds have flourished in Myanmar’s lawless borderlands, staffed by foreigners — many of them Chinese — who often say they were trafficked and forced to swindle people online, part of a multibillion-dollar illicit industry.

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

The crimes of the five people sentenced Tuesday had led to the “deaths of six Chinese nationals, one Chinese national’s suicide and injuries to several others,” official news agency Xinhua said, citing a court in the southern city of Shenzhen.

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

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

Five defendants were given life imprisonment, while sentences ranging from three to 20 years were given to nine others.

In late September, a Chinese court issued death sentences to 16 members of a family-run gang with operations in Kokang —  five with two-year reprieves.

A growing, illegal international business

The United Nations warned that Chinese and Southeast Asian gangs are raking in tens of billions of dollars a year through cyber scam centers. 

Sprawling compounds where internet tricksters target people with romance and business cons have thrived along Myanmar’s loosely governed border during its civil war, which was sparked by a 2021 coup.

While Myanmar’s border region has been a hotbed of the illegal activity, the industry has spread to South America, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and some Pacific Islands, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. 

A CBS News investigation just last year revealed the massive fraud operations targeting unsuspecting Americans from scam centers in Ghana, where young Ghanaians are lured into potentially lucrative lives of cyber fraud, but quickly become tools of transnational criminal syndicates that work in what’s become a billion-dollar industry.

The U.N. estimates that hundreds of thousands of people are working in scam centers globally, and the flourishing centers in Myanmar have drawn many workers from Southeast Asia as well as 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 led to workers fleeing over the border.

One of the most notorious hubs — KK Park — was roiled by apparent raids in late October, with hundreds of workers fleeing over the frontier river to the Thai town of Mae Sot.

The upheaval followed an AFP investigation which this month revealed rapid construction at border scam centers, despite a much-publicized 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.

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

Many people staffing the fraud factories say they were trafficked into the hubs, although analysts say some workers also go willingly to secure attractive salary offers.

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

“I got a lot of punishments, like I receive shock, electric shock everyday. I received punch everyday,” Yotor, a 19-year-old Ethiopian who escaped one of the compounds, told Reuters. “They just want to punish us, and they punish us. Because, like, we were working for 18 hours without salary, without, like they did not allow us to contact our family.”

Experts say Myanmar’s military, which has ruled over the country since seizing power in the 2021 coup, has long turned a blind eye to the scam centers, profits from which are believed to go to its militia allies, who are crucial collaborators in their fight against rebels.

But the junta has also faced pressure to shut down scam operations from its military backer China, irked at its citizens both participating in and being targeted by the scams.