China: Four more people executed in Myanmar scam crackdown

Beijing has continued to clamp down on Myanmar-based telecom scams with another set of executions. The fraud operations reportedly involve cryptocurrency investments and also have links to drug smuggling.

Four more people have been executed in China as authorities continue to clamp down on Myanmar-based fraud syndicates, a Chinese court confirmed on Monday — the second such announcement in less than a week.

Those executed were allegedly leading members of the "Bai family criminal group," according to a statement from the Intermediate People's Court in the southern city of Shenzhen, near Hong Kong.

They had been found guilty of crimes including "fraud, intentional homicide, intentional injury, kidnapping, extortion [and] forced prostitution," among other things.

One member, Bai Yingcang, was also found to have "colluded to sell and manufacture about 11 tons of methamphetamine."

According to the court, the group ran sprawling scam complexes in the Kokang region of northern Myanmar. Their activities were found to have led to the deaths of six Chinese citizens and injuries to "many" others, the court said.

A fifth person, Bai Suocheng, had also been sentenced to death following November's verdicts but the group's alleged ringleader apparently "died of illness."

Chinese crackdown on fraud operations

The latest executions come less than a week after a court in the eastern Chinese city of Wenzhou said it had executed 11 people linked to telecom scam operations with the "Ming family criminal group."

In recent years, Beijing has stepped up cooperation with governments in neighboring countries such as Myanmar, Cambodia and Thailand to clamp down on billion-dollar fraud operations in which scammers lure internet users into fake romantic relationships and cryptocurrency investments.

The scams are often coordinated from large compounds employing thousands of foreign workers — some willingly, others trafficked — who may then face trial in China's opaque justice system alongside their former bosses.

Edited by: Elizabeth Schumacher