A Chinese court has begun hearing charges against 23 members of a notorious Myanmar -based telecoms fraud gang accused of a range of crimes. The suspects are associated with the Ming family gang and were charged with 11 crimes - including telecoms fraud, murder, intentional injury, illegal detention, extortion, running a gambling den, organising prostitution and drug trafficking - state broadcaster CCTV reported on Wednesday.
According to CCTV, prosecutors in Wenzhou in China's eastern Zhejiang province alleged the Ming family "leveraged their influence and armed forces" to set up "industrial parks" and had colluded with financial backers on various crimes since As a result, 14 Chinese were killed and six wounded, and billions of yuan was lost to fraud. Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world?
Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge , our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team. They alleged the gang's operations were centred in Kokang, in Myanmar's northern Shan state, which shares a border with China's southwestern Yunnan province.
Prosecutors said the gang established a network of industrial estates and compounds that housed thousands of scammers and used a range of tactics to target their victims, including fake investment schemes, phishing scams and extortion. Prosecutors said there was evidence that in October Ming's gang killed Chinese captives who tried to flee as they were being moved to another compound.
The Ming crime group was led by Ming Xuechang , a Chinese-Myanmar national who was a member of Myanmar's Shan state legislature and a former member of the Kokang leadership committee. He died in an apparent suicide in November after being detained by Chinese police. Ming Guoping was a leader of the Kokang Border Guard Force, which operates under the command of Myanmar's military, a position the gang "exploited" to protect and profit from fraud operations, according to Chinese state media.
