Five people of a criminal syndicate based in northern Myanmar were sentenced to death by a Shenzhen court on Tuesday for running telecom scams, illegal casinos, and a killing machine that left six Chinese nationals dead, one driven to suicide, and several others injured, all while trafficking thousands with false promises of easy money.
The network built 41 fortified compounds in Myanmar’s Kokang region, where victims were confined, tortured, and forced to defraud people online or work in underground gambling dens.
The total haul from fraud and betting exceeded 29 billion yuan. One of the condemned men also directed the production and trafficking of about 11 tonnes of methamphetamine.
Beyond the five death sentences, the court issued two suspended death penalties, five life imprisonments, and terms of three to twenty years for nine others, along with fines, property confiscation, and deportation orders for non-Chinese nationals.
The scam operation under the Bai Suocheng family relied on specialized recruitment teams that used hometown ties and social networks to lure people with offers of high salaries, free meals, accommodation, and travel.
Victims were told they would simply carry jade stones or luxury watches across the border—cover stories that masked kidnapping and enslavement.
Inside the compounds, failure to hit performance targets triggered a structured punishment system combining beatings, starvation, electrocution, and psychological torment. Guards operated under a prison-like regime backed by armed protection.
The Bai, Ming Xuechang, Wei Chaoren, and Liu Zhengxiang families—known locally as Kokang’s “four big families".
The Ming clan alone is believed to have detained at least ten thousand people, mostly Chinese. Their largest site became notorious for its scale and brutality.
Peng Daxun, the pro-China militia leader and Chairman of the Special Region 1 of Myanmar, has long accused the clans of running their empires with the complicity of Myanmar’s military, enabling mass abduction, ransom demands, forced labor, human trafficking, and death by torture or organ removal for those who fell short.
