China to execute five for crimes in Myanmar gambling-related case

The Chinese government has sentenced five members of a Myanmar criminal gang to death for murder, fraud and related charges. Bai Suocheng, his son Bai Yingcang and three associates were sentenced Monday before the Shenzhen Intermediate People’s Court.

Bai Suocheng was the godfather-like head of one of Myanmar’s notorious “Four Families”. Starting in the early 2000s, the gangs turned the sleepy border town of Laukkaing into a hub of criminal activity with unregulated gaming halls and houses of prostitution. According to CNN, the illicit operations turned an impoverished community over time into “a glittering casino city”.

The group kept pace with the times, eventually adding online casinos and scams to the land-based operations. Before their arrests, the Bais ran 41 scam factories in Laukkaing on China’s northeastern border. There they conducted “pig-butchering scams”, building seemingly trusting romantic or financial relationships with online victims, then stealing their money, often via cryptocurrency transactions.

Often the scammers are themselves victims, working under threat of abuse or torture. The United States Institute of Peace said the workers are often “duped by fraudulent ads for lucrative high-tech jobs and trafficked illegally into scam compounds. … (I)n prisonlike conditions, they must run online romance and investment scams.”

According to a documentary about the Bai family, one worker said his bosses beat him, pulled out his fingernails with pliers and severed two of his fingers.

China to predators: ‘You will pay the price’

For years, the Bais operated with impunity, reaping an estimated 29 billion Chinese yuan (US$4.1 billion) in ill-gotten revenue. Bai Yingcang acknowledged that his family was “absolutely number one” among Laukkaing mafia gangs, enjoying protection from the local militia. “Our Bai family was the most powerful in both the political and military circles,” he said.

That started to change in 2023, when China pressured the Myanmar junta to arrest scammers who preyed on Chinese citizens. In September, a Chinese court sentenced 11 members of the Ming family to death on similar charges.

“Why is China making so much effort to go after the Four Families?” asked an investigator in the documentary. “It’s to warn other people, no matter who you are, where you are, as long as you commit such heinous crimes against the Chinese people, you will pay the price.”

Cost of criminal gangs in Southeast Asia

The online gambling boom has helped turned Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos into virtual scam centres. The US-based Center for Strategic and International Studies blames “the transnational nature of online gambling, lax governance … and ASEAN’s fractured regulatory environment.”

In Monday’s ruling, 16 other associates of the Bai family were given prison terms of three years to life. In a separate case, the court sentenced Bai Yingcang for conspiring to manufacture and distribute 11 tonnes of methamphetamine.