China Executes 11 People Linked to Multi-Billion Scam

The Chinese government has moved forward with the execution of 11 people who a local court in Zhejiang province found guilty of participating in various criminal activities, including but not limited to online scams and gambling. 

Among those executed were Ming Guoping and Ming Zhenzhen, the alleged ring leaders, and other high-ranking group members, such as Zhou Weichang, Wu Hongming, and Luao Jianzhang.

China Executes Ming Crime-Family’s Leaders and Lieutenants 

The deceased were members of a notorious mafia family that operated out of Myanmar and targeted Chinese nationals as well as overseas residents in various scams. 

They were sentenced in September, facing a long rap sheet, including homicide, illegal detention, fraud, and the operation of illegal gambling businesses. The Mafiosi were arrested back in 2023 by a local ethnic militia and were eventually transferred to Chinese authorities. 

China has long taken a dim view of gambling, and it has invested considerable financial resources and personnel to track down operations that are harming its citizens. In the Philippines, the shuttering of the POGOs sector has been tied to a dramatic dip in the overall cases of kidnappings of Chinese nationals.

China has thrown its geopolitical might in its backyard to motivate neighbors to collaborate with it and scale down gambling in Cambodia, Thailand, and Laos. While the country’s means have appeared coercive to critics, China has been able to reduce the number of human trafficking cases involving its own nationals. 

Cambodia recently extradited Chen Zhi, a billionaire businessman accused of running a massive cryptocurrency scam, to China.

In the case of the Ming mafia family, the culprits are tied to a $1.4-billion gambling ring that operated between 2015 and 2023. The court found that at least 14 Chinese nationals were killed because of the business’s operations, and many others were mentioned.

More than 20 other members of the Ming family were offered more lenient sentences, with some set to serve only five years, while others were imprisoned for life.