China imposes death sentences on three members of Myanmar scam syndicate

On Tuesday, the Quanzhou Intermediate People’s Court sentenced Wei Huairen, Chen Dawei and Liao Jingfang to death for heading the Wei family criminal gang, which ran a network of large-scale scam centers in Myanmar’s Kokang region along the Chinese border. The gang’s operations, described by CCTV as the most violent in northern Myanmar, combined telecommunications fraud, drug trafficking, illegal casinos, prostitution and the murder of at least two Chinese nationals, amassing over 12.2 billion yuan in illicit profits.

Authorities also handed life sentences to three additional gang members and imprisoned 55 others for periods between three years and 24 years. Investigators uncovered remains of victims bound with iron chains and bearing bullet wounds to the skull, underscoring the brutality of the compounds. The crackdown follows earlier executions of members of other notorious crime families, reflecting China’s intensified cooperation with Southeast Asian nations to dismantle cross-border fraud networks.