🔗 Share this article

One Chinese court has condemned five top members of a well-known Burmese mafia to capital punishment as Chinese authorities continues its crackdown on scam networks in South East Asia.

Overall, twenty-one clan individuals and collaborators were sentenced of fraud, murder, assault and other offenses, reported a official report released on the court website.

The family is among a few of syndicates that gained influence in the 2000s and changed the impoverished backwater town of the town into a profitable base of gambling establishments and nightlife areas.

In recent years they shifted to scams in which many of illegally moved individuals, many of them from China, are trapped, abused and obligated to cheat targets in criminal operations worth billions.

Specifics of the Judgment

Mafia leader Bai Suocheng and his offspring Bai Yingcang were among the group of individuals condemned to death by the Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court. Another individual, Hu Xiaojiang and Chen Guangyi were the remaining convicted.

Two individuals of the Bai family mafia were received suspended death sentences. Several were condemned to life imprisonment, while more figures were received prison sentences between three to 20 years.

The clan, who commanded their own private army, established forty-one bases to house their digital scam operations and casinos, authorities reported.

Scale of Illegal Operations

Such illegal operations involved over twenty-nine billion Chinese yuan (over four billion dollars; £3.1 billion). These activities also resulted in the deaths of six from China citizens, the suicide of one and numerous assaults, official sources announced.

The harsh penalties handed down by the judicial body are part of the Chinese initiative to eliminate the large scam rings in Southeast Asia - and send a strong warning to further criminal groups.

Context of the Families

Such groups gained influence in the 2000s with the help of a military leader - who currently heads Myanmar's junta. He had wanted to bolster allies in the town after removing its former warlord.

Among the families, the Bais were "the top", the son previously stated to state media.

During that period, the clan was the leading in each of the government and military arenas," he remarked in a film about the Bai family, aired on national media in July.

In the same documentary, a individual at a fraud facilities narrated the abuse he had endured there: besides being hit, he had his nails extracted with pliers and two of his fingers cut off with a tool.

Additional Allegations

The son is among those who were sentenced to death in the latest ruling. The individual has also been separately convicted of conspiring to smuggle and make 11 tonnes of methamphetamine, official sources stated.

Downfall of the Families

The families' fall came in recent times as circumstances changed.

For years Beijing has urged the regime to control fraudulent operations in the area.

Recently, the Chinese police issued arrest warrants for the leading individuals of such clans.

The patriarch, the Bai family's patriarch, was included in the figures who were handed to China from Myanmar in recent months.

"Why is the authorities making so much effort to go after the clans?" a Chinese investigator said in the July film.

The purpose is to caution groups, no matter your identity, your base, if you engage in these serious crimes targeting the nationals, you will pay the price."