Beijing, February 26 Chinese security officials claim to have "completely dismantled" notorious Chinese criminal gangs based in Myanmar and Cambodia, who terrorized the world with online extortion rackets, forcing people to part with their hard-earned savings.
Thousands of people in India, China, and several other countries were defrauded by these gangs operating along the Thai-Myanmar border and in Cambodia.
By the end of 2025, Chinese courts nationwide had sentenced more than 41,000 individuals repatriated from northern Myanmar for their involvement in telecom fraud, including executing 16 individuals who had been given death sentences and sentencing 39 to life imprisonment, according to a spokesman for China's Supreme People's Court (SPC).
The notorious Ming and Bai family criminal gangs based in northern Myanmar have been completely dismantled, the spokesman said, as quoted by the state-run Global Times on Thursday.
He also stated that Chinese courts had concluded more than 27,000 first-instance cases involving telecom fraud linked to northern Myanmar by the end of 2025.
Among these cases, those involving the Ming and Bai criminal gangs – part of the widely-watched "four major families" criminal rings in northern Myanmar – have completed all judicial proceedings.
A total of 39 individuals were sentenced to life imprisonment or harsher penalties, with 16 of them sentenced to death and executed immediately. The two major cross-border armed criminal groups have been completely dismantled, the spokesperson said.
China, along with Thai officials, conducted raids into the massive networks built by the Chinese gangs along the Myanmar-Thai border, enticing young people from different countries, including India and China, with lucrative job offers and later forcing them to call people demanding huge sums, threatening them with online arrests.
Earlier, the Chinese Public Security Ministry said that a total of 258,000 telecom fraud cases had been solved last year.
The ministry said that it intercepted 3.6 billion fraudulent phone calls and 3.3 billion fraudulent text messages, and froze 21.707 billion yuan (USD 3.1 million) in fraud-related funds.
In response to the currently severe situation of telecom and online fraud crimes targeting China from Myanmar and Thailand, more than 7,600 Chinese nationals suspected of involvement in telecom fraud cases have been brought back to China, the ministry said.