China Executes 11 Members of Myanmar Scam Mafia (bbc.com) 122
The BBC reports:
China has executed 11 members of a notorious mafia family that ran scam centres in Myanmar along its north-eastern border, state media report.
The Ming family members were sentenced in September for various crimes including homicide, illegal detention, fraud and operating gambling dens by a court in China's Zhejiang province. The Mings were one of many clans that ran the town of Laukkaing, transforming an impoverished backwater town into a flashy hub of casinos and red-light districts. Their scam empire came crashing down in 2023, when they were detained and handed over to China by ethnic militias that had taken control of Laukkaing during an escalation in their conflict with Myanmar's army. With these executions Beijing is sending a message of deterrence to would-be scammers.
But the business has now moved to Myanmar's border with Thailand, and to Cambodia and Laos, where China has much less influence.
Hundreds of thousands of people have been trafficked to run online scams in Myanmar and elsewhere in South East Asia, according to estimates by the UN. Among them are thousands of Chinese people, and their victims who they swindle billions of dollars from are mainly Chinese too. Frustrated by the Myanmar military's refusal to stop the scam business, from which it was almost certainly profiting, Beijing tacitly backed an offensive by an ethnic insurgent alliance in Shan State in late 2023. The alliance captured significant territory from the military and overran Laukkaing, a key border town.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader sinij for sharing the news.
The Ming family members were sentenced in September for various crimes including homicide, illegal detention, fraud and operating gambling dens by a court in China's Zhejiang province. The Mings were one of many clans that ran the town of Laukkaing, transforming an impoverished backwater town into a flashy hub of casinos and red-light districts. Their scam empire came crashing down in 2023, when they were detained and handed over to China by ethnic militias that had taken control of Laukkaing during an escalation in their conflict with Myanmar's army. With these executions Beijing is sending a message of deterrence to would-be scammers.
But the business has now moved to Myanmar's border with Thailand, and to Cambodia and Laos, where China has much less influence.
Hundreds of thousands of people have been trafficked to run online scams in Myanmar and elsewhere in South East Asia, according to estimates by the UN. Among them are thousands of Chinese people, and their victims who they swindle billions of dollars from are mainly Chinese too. Frustrated by the Myanmar military's refusal to stop the scam business, from which it was almost certainly profiting, Beijing tacitly backed an offensive by an ethnic insurgent alliance in Shan State in late 2023. The alliance captured significant territory from the military and overran Laukkaing, a key border town.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader sinij for sharing the news.
Well, I guess that's finally the end of (Score:5, Funny)
... the Ming Dynasty.
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They had nice vases in Laukkaing, although they were a little pricey.
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I don't get the joke, but I don't know that much about Chinese history. Care to clarify the funny? (But recently learning some stuff about the period from 1800-50.)
At first I thought it might be related to a duck dynasty. There was (or is? or might have been?) a fake reality program with such a name.
Too bad it won't be the end of the scammer dynasty. But I'm kind of against killing anyone, even scamming spammers. I think they would suffer more if their scams were all blocked, they couldn't get any money, bu
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Here ya go [wikipedia.org].
One thing the Ming Dynasty is known for is - it was when most of the construction happened for what people typically think of as the "Great Wall of China" (most of the brick and stone wall sections).
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ACK but I'm not going to review Chinese history for you. I'm not saying you don't deserve the Funny moderation. I'm still saying that I didn't get your joke in particular and the moderation has been pretty lousy in general.
My bad? I thought "the end of" in the Subject was sufficient linkage back to the original story, but once again I seem to have overestimated. Or overestimated. Or written badly. Or whatever.
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Gotcha. I think. To actually answer your question, then...
The people who were running this "Myanmar scam mafia" were all members of a family named Ming (according to the first sentence of the second paragraph in TFS). So my post made a play on the fact that the "Ming dynasty" is a very well-known period in Chinese history.
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Okay, and I should clarify that I appreciate your attempts at humor. Not much left on Slashdot these years. Or should that be "not much left of Slashdot"?
Weird small world coincidences, but a "classic" history book I'm reading just had a capsule history of the Ming dynasty. And before I saw your reply I was suckered by a clickbait headline into learning about the Ming family and a bit more about the other three families who are still being tried.
But surely you aren't insisting on RTFA?
(Don't call you Shirle
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All three of them? I'm sure that would make a big dent in the US crime figures. /s
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Is this more anti-Western propaganda from you cusco?
cusco is a sick evil person and the more people that know the better.
His only job is to destabilize the West and promote evil.
cusco's propaganda claims about Iran...
By the way, most if not all of the "massacres" are inventions of the US propaganda industry. [slashdot.org] Everyone knows about the massacres of the Supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, killing upwards of 15,000 unarmed protesters and random civilians. Credible estimates put the number far
Death penalty is rarely an effective crime deterre (Score:1, Insightful)
Not to mention barbaric. This unfortunately won't do much to curb scams. New scammers appear and just relocate.
Re: Death penalty is rarely an effective crime det (Score:2, Troll)
Says who? You?
Re: Death penalty is rarely an effective crime det (Score:5, Informative)
In the US, statistics say the death penalty has very little effect. Among other things, states with the death penalty have higher homicide rates than those that have abolished it.
In most criminal acts, people only think about whether or not they will be caught; the severity of the penalty is not a significant part of the equation.
There have been many studies of this:
https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
Re: Death penalty is rarely an effective crime de (Score:2, Insightful)
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The recidivism rate for Scandinavian countries is MUCH lower than other Western countries.
Imagine that, focusing on rehabilitation seems to help rehabilitate people.
Re: Death penalty is rarely an effective crime de (Score:1)
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But not the actual criminal. Still I guess executing innocent people makes sure they're never guilty of a crime in the future.
Re: Death penalty is rarely an effective crime de (Score:2)
United states? Maybe the population that votes for trump doesn't grasp what death penalty means?
Anyway, saudi, uae, kuwait, oman..beg to differ - they all have death penalty and very little crime.
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they report very little crime.
Re: Death penalty is rarely an effective crime det (Score:5, Insightful)
In the US, statistics say the death penalty has very little effect. Among other things, states with the death penalty have higher homicide rates than those that have abolished it.
You could state the exact same statistic in the opposite order: states with higher homicide rates are more likely to have the death penalty than those with lower homicide rates. Not to say that the conclusion is wrong, just that this particular statistic is hard to interpret.
But, the wild card is that homicide rates are decreasing in all states, with or without the death penalty.
In most criminal acts, people only think about whether or not they will be caught; the severity of the penalty is not a significant part of the equation. There have been many studies of this: search?q=death+penalty+deterrence+facts+united+states [google.com]
Re: Death penalty is rarely an effective crime det (Score:4, Interesting)
That's probably because the population is getting older.
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Yeah I thought about killing someone the other day, but... who has the energy? I took a nap instead.
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Who said this is a deterrent? By all accounts these people here should have been removed from life. Ideally we'd invent a time machine and give their parents the death penalty instead. It's one thing to rape and murder, it's quite another to head up a ring of mass trafficking, slavery, torture, all to defraud others.
These people didn't commit crimes, they invented entire enterprises to perform crime in a commercial quantity. Fuck them. The death penalty wasn't barbaric enough.
Criminals are rarely rational actors (Score:3)
In most criminal acts, people only think about whether or not they will be caught; the severity of the penalty is not a significant part of the equation.
There have been many studies of this: https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
Absolutely! Or put another way, they're irrational and usually dysfunctional individuals. Selling drugs is not lucrative. Most dealers earn less than minimum wage. If they were rational and well informed, they'd just get a job. In order to resist a momentary impulse and consider the consequences that may fall tomorrow, you need to be in a good place mentally. I grew up in shitty neighborhoods, first in rural poverty and then later on the South Side of Chicago in the ghetto. I met a lot of criminals
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"I've personally never met or heard of a rational, functional criminal."
There are a lot of them, they fill boardrooms, political buildings, luxury yachts and banking offices. They just have enough money and connections to get away with it
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It's not that removing the death penalty makes people safer, it's the opposite. Safe countries are able to remove the death penalty. Countries with general lawlessness and high homicide rates have to use stronger policy tools.
If you compare equally stable countries, such as Japan and Norway, Japan has a lower crime rate in every category. It's even worse if you compare Norway to the infamously strict Singapore. Norway has 20x as many assaults, 80% more murders and 8 times as many rapes.
Re: Death penalty is rarely an effective crime de (Score:2)
TFS.
Re: Death penalty is rarely an effective crime de (Score:5, Informative)
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It really depends on just how you analyze things.
E.g., if you counted the people killed by corporations maximizing their profit, you'd say that it was almost never applied to the guilty.
Re: Death penalty is rarely an effective crime de (Score:1)
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Somebody in the corporation, or perhaps a conspiracy of people in the corporation, decided and implemented the actions. It's clearly murder for profit. But proving it is difficult, and politically dangerous, so it's never prosecuted.
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If they had executed the CEO of RJR tobacco once they discovered that their product definitely killed people and not only continued production but lied about the result of their research millions would have been saved.
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I'd certainly agree with giving the death penalty to corporations, particularly tobacco and chemical companies.
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You do stop the individual from committing more crimes for cheaper than life in prison, and if it's something completely hideous like a serial rapist or something, it might be worth it.
However that require a justice system that is not full of false positives, which we probably don't have anywhere in the planet.
Re: Death penalty is rarely an effective crime de (Score:2)
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You gave the worst possible argument. That kind of argument convinces people you are not worth listening to. Here is a more effective argument against the death penalty.
There are three basic kinds of crime: Passion, Greed, Casual.
Passionate crimes are made in the heat of the moment without logical thought. When you realize your wife was sleeping with the boss that made you work late so he would have time with her, and then fired you rather than promoting you, you are not thinking logically about what the
Re: Death penalty is rarely an effective crime de (Score:2)
Re: Death penalty is rarely an effective crime d (Score:1)
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This always brings to my mind the guy in Texas, Willingham, who was later put to death over the house fire that killed his children. All based on apparent junk forensic science, even known then to be. Several investigations after showed it was all junk forensic science, and the then governor ignored it all. He even changed the make up of the state commission responsible for investigating such cases to keep it from reviewing a major report showing the inept science used. Most likely an innocent guy went to t
Re: Death penalty is rarely an effective crime de (Score:3)
If you wanted a meaningful response, you wouldn't have started with those 3 words.
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Re: Death penalty is rarely an effective crime det (Score:2)
My point had nothing to do with having a bleeding heart. It was whether DP is effective at deterring future crimes, by which I meant similar crimes committed by other people, not by those executed. And research doesn't show that It does.
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There is VERY little evidence that it has much effect.
What's mot effective is belief that if one commits the crime one will be caught and punished. The seriousness of the punishment is less significant. (My belief is that those convicted should have relatively short sentences of TOTAL isolation. No communication even with the guards. Hope they don't injure themselves. I guess one would need to allow lawyers to visit occasionally, and perhaps a doctor once a month. Among many other things, this would t
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Solitary confinement is considered torture by most of the civilized world, and by the Pentagon as well. It was one of the methods used to torture people in Gitmo and the US 'Black Sites', and can cause some serious mental illnesses.
My Personal Guarantee (Score:3, Insightful)
You have my personal guarantee that these 11 will never ever ever again, murder, scam, or commit any other criminal act.
If that isn't a deterrent, I don't know what is.
Capital punishment, any punishment, will never deter everyone. But capital punishment is proven 100% effective against recidivism. 100% And, I'm very satisfied with that.
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And how does that compare with the recidivism rate of those in prison for life?
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Very poorly. I'm sure you've heard of murders, assaults, rapes, thefts, extortions... perpetrated by prisoners while inside prisons.
I think you were in too much of a hurry to argue your feelings so you failed to think about it objectively for even a second.
If you were actually clever, you could argue that the rate is undefinable since you can't divide by zero.
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Sounds like those 11 made the mistake of staying in Laukkaing after the military lost control. The article mentions continued scamming in cities that aren't turning them over to the Chinese.
I'm not against the death penalty, but when you concurrently have a huge loophole that allows no penalty, you still have a crime problem regardless of the executions that do occur.
I'm reminded of a Russian saying that goes something like: "The harshness of the law is negated by its optional nature."
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Accurate, though I'm really confused why this debate is happening at all.
Human traffickers in Myanmar aren't going to be the slightest bit curious about what US law says about the death penalty. They probably would care to know whether or not a country with an army might decide shut them down. Kind of weird to wake up in a world where the US is focused on attacking it's own citizens while China is getting into the business of stopping human traffickers.
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You don't know what is.
The death penalty isn't a meaningful deterrent--we still have a lot of crime. We still have these 11 people perpetrating crime until they're caught and killed by the state. This assumes that they're actually the guilty parties and not some fall-guys for the real criminals.
Punishment is the *worst* way to *prevent* crime because it relies on:
a) someone actually committing the crime (that is, the harm is done)
b) someone caring enough to solve the crime
c) the system prosecuting the crime
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Wrong. It is actually the opposite situation here in Sweden now, unfortunately. That was perhaps the goal and sentiment respectively thirty years ago.
Today, the prisons are full, and there have been inquiries to rent cells in other countries until new prisons have been built.
The current administ
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Actually, a second comment to expound a little:
Few people commit crimes knowing that they'll get caught. I would daresay that nearly 100% of criminals believe that they'll get away with it.
If you think you're going to get away with a crime, you're not going to consider the potential consequences. Alternately, some people commit certain kinds of crimes because they believe they've got a moral cause to do so (some kinds of protests, refusing the draft, etc.)
Given that, the severity of the penalty probably doe
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Yeah well in the USA there's a lot of stupid people too, such as those who use a justification of an error of justice from a country known to use the death penalty in stupid cases and attempt to apply them to a case where guilt isn't even in question.
Maybe make your point on a different story, it would have more meaning.
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Not to mention barbaric. This unfortunately won't do much to curb scams. New scammers appear and just relocate.
It ensures the criminals will never criminal again.
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The only real concern is that it cannot be undone if there was a mistake.
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Fine, first degree murder - life without parole
Same for crimes like Bernie Madoff did. The people scamming the elderly should get life.
Same for anyone that assaults a child or elderly person.
Same should go for anyone convicted of 2 violent felonies or a political assassination and attempts.
Iryna Zarutska's killer had been arrested 14 times and released.
Logan Federico's killer had been arrested 39 times and released.
It's time to flush these people from society.
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The death penalty as instituted in the Untied States is not an effective deterrent.
FTFY
A death penalty decision in the US is mostly carried out by old age as the person waits on 'Death Row' for decades of appeals. In all my reading of history I've encountered exactly one civilization which was essentially crime-free, the Inca. The penalty for most crimes was death, carried out quickly and without appeals. They had essentially no prisons because an offender was reviewed and either released or condemned pr
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Or will they relocate to the Thailand, Cambodia and Laos and kidnap and scam those people instead.
The scammers have been arrested in Cambodia [bbc.com] Thailand [theguardian.com] and Laos [bhaskarenglish.in].
It's not clear what spurred the arrests, but it's a good thing.
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It's not clear what spurred the arrests, but it's a good thing.
Believe it or not, my SIL sending a Facebook message from inside one of the forced-labor compounds where she was being held to Hun Sen, the president of Cambodia, is what spurred this. It's a bonkers story and we thought it was BS, but it turns out it's true.
And now the scammers are all dead, so things worked out just fine.
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Believe it or not, my SIL sending a Facebook message
Your sister-in-law?
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Yes, my sister-in-law. While held in their compound, she managed to get a post onto Facebook and some of her friends forwarded it to Hun Sen.
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That was incredibly brave, I'm glad it worked.
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The strange thing about this story is that Myanmar's army is only recognized by Beijing. The previous regime led by Ahn San Su Kyi generally had broad support worldwide, but particularly from India. Whereas after she was toppled, Myanmar is a failed state, and there are separatist rebels who have also caused an insurrection in North East India
Given that, it's rather strange that the Myanmar military is not at the beck & call of Beijing
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Well, the Chinese state is traditionally extremely isolationist. It traditionally has minimal interest in those outside it's borders (outside of brief exceptions). Perhaps it supports Myanmar's army because they represent not threat, and are at least minimally a source of profit (if only as a bad example).
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It's often questionable how much goodwill is generated, when they insist that all the decision making employees be Chinese. (I don't know how common that it, but it's certainly been reported, so it's probably at least occasionally true.) But it *is* intended to be profitable to China, and to those controlling the allocation of contracts. It's not a scam, but it's often a deal with most of the benefits going to China. (Which is what you expect of a mercantile nation.)
Belt/Road policies (Score:2)
Like HiThere suggested above, China didn't generate much goodwill in these countries, once the latter realized they were now in debt traps. Sri Lanka lost an entire port Hanbantola as a result of not being to pay up, and other countries wised up to it as well. Not just that, since China sent in PLA members to work on these projects, rather than train the locals and improve the employment scenario in those countries, which would actually have enabled them to repay Beijing's debts
Had Beijing actually thou
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No, Burma had better relations w/ India, which was in competition w/ China for influence in the region. Unlike the West, India had no issues w/ her or the Rohingya separatists, and had some development deals in the works. All that died once the military junta took over
Well done (Score:1)
They kidnap Chinese people and turn them into slaves doing scam calls, probably never to be seen again.
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So... (Score:2)
They executed the mafia executives. ðY(TM)
Controversial though (Score:2)
Some people are beyond hope, beyond the capabilities of the corrections system. A life of crime is all all they know, how they've got by all their life, and it would be very near impossible to do anything about it. They'd need to be permanently cut off their family and crime circles and effectively start a new life from zero. Not going to happen.
If you're beyond help and consistently provide negative value to the society, then perhaps the society is better off without you.
Trafficking (Score:5, Informative)
Hundreds of thousands of people have been trafficked to run online scams in Myanmar and elsewhere in South East Asia.
I was in the Philippines last November attending a wedding. The groom was a member of the Philippine Coast Guard. He said the #1 problem he dealt with was illegal fishing. The #2 problem he dealt with was trafficking of women and children. He said they seize at least one boat every month with hundreds of passengers. These women (and parents of the children) actually pay brokers to transport them over to Thailand, where they are promised employment. Then, when they get to Thailand, they're smuggled through the country into Laos, Cambodia, or Burma to work in these locations managed by crime families, often managed by the Chinese mafia.
Never forget: slavery still exists today. The western world just outsourced it to poorer countries.
Re:Trafficking (Score:5, Informative)
The western world didn't outsource squat. These drug cartels in these countries are local - manned by locals. That area is known as the Golden Triangle for being the hub of opium trade historically, and who knows what narcs these days. They didn't need any Western influence to engage in this trade
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The western world didn't outsource squat. These drug cartels in these countries are local
Which countries consume the largest amounts of these drugs?
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those with the largest populations.
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Perhaps you should read a history book about that.
All the trade there is thanx to the British Easy India Company and a to some extend to the Dutch East India Company.
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Speaking of which, the podcast Behind the bastards [behindthebastards.com] did a couple of episodes about the East India company:
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You point out that slavery exists in Cambodia, Laos and Burma, and it’s facilitated by China. Then, somehow, you manage to blame the west for it? Wut?
I’m not denying the past crimes that the West has committed (although there really isn’t a unified “west” in the way people like to think). But, blaming the crimes of Laos and the Chinese triads on the west sounds a lot like look-what-you-m
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Thousands of people are sex slaves or trapped in sweatshops in Western countries. Slavery is alive and well here, we just pretend it isn't.
How is this story... (Score:2)
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It's an unpleasant thought. But as unwelcome as this may be: it's all enabled by our new technologies.
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It's a phishing operation. Slashdot covers infosec. Slashdot has regularly reported on these scam centers over the years, including their efforts to secure internet access.
Do you even read Slashdot?
Yup, this happens (Score:5, Interesting)
My Cambodian SIL got caught up in this; she and her boyfriend were basically abducted, driven to Myanmar and locked in one of these compounds. They were forced to work phone scams and were beaten if they didn't perform.
She managed to get a message to Hun Sen (over Facebook, of all places), and believe it or not, he listened. The Cambodian authorities worked with the Myanmar cops (who are NOTORIOUSLY CROOKED) and they raided the compound, freeing them and hundreds of other forced-labor workers (prisoners/slaves). So my SIL helped get them shut down and arrested, and now they'll all be executed and pushing up daisies.
Iran-Contra, Chinese style (Score:2)
Beijing tacitly backed an offensive by an ethnic insurgent alliance
I'm betting that Xi Jinping won't have to sit through a congressional committee cross examination.
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Yeah, like the CIA never did anything like this. LOL
Not just the chinese (Score:2)
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That wasn't execution, that was murder. There was not trial and conviction.
Re:How many people (Score:4, Insightful)