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0 China has executed 11 people linked to online scam centres in Myanmar, according to state media, as Beijing toughens its crackdown on the illegal operations.
Those executed on Thursday were sentenced to death in September by a court in the eastern Chinese city of Wenzhou, Xinhua said, adding that the court also carried out the executions.
The crimes of those executed included “intentional homicide, intentional injury, unlawful detention, fraud and casino establishment”, Xinhua added.
Fraud compounds where scammers lure internet users into fake romantic relationships and cryptocurrency investments have flourished across Southeast Asia, including in Myanmar’s borderlands.
Largely targeting Chinese speakers at the outset, the criminal groups behind the compounds have expanded operations into multiple languages to steal from and defraud victims around the world.
Those conducting the scams are sometimes willing con artists, and other times trafficked foreign nationals forced to work.
In recent years, Beijing has stepped up cooperation with Thailand and Myanmar to crack down on the compounds, and thousands of people have been repatriated to face trial.
The death sentences for the 11 people executed were approved by the Supreme People’s Court in Beijing, which found that the evidence produced of crimes committed since 2015 was “conclusive and sufficient”, reported Xinhua.
Among the executed were members of the “Ming family criminal group”, whose activities had contributed to the deaths of 14 Chinese citizens and injuries to “many others”.
Fraud operations centred in Myanmar’s border regions have extracted billions of dollars from around the world through phone and internet scams.
ands of workers perpetrate online romance scams known as “pig-butchering”, often targeting people in the West in a vastly lucrative industry responsible for the theft of tens of billions of dollars each year.
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime warned in April that the cyberscam industry was spreading across the world, including to South America, Africa, the Middle East, Europe and a number of Pacific Islands.
In October, the United States and United Kingdom announced sweeping sanctions against the Cambodia-based Prince Group network for running a chain of “scam centres” in Cambodia, Myanmar and across the region.
