China executed this Thursday eleven members of a cyber scam mafia operating from Myanmar known as the 'Ming family criminal group', who had been sentenced to death last September by a court in the eastern city of Wenzhou. Among the executed are 'key members' of these networks, according to the official Xinhua agency. During the same process, the court also handed down five suspended death sentences for two years, eleven life sentences, and twelve sentences ranging from five to twenty-four years for crimes including fraud, intentional homicide, and intentional injury, among a total of fourteen criminal charges. The court found that since 2015, a group organized around members of the so-called 'Ming family' used its influence in the Kokang region (Myanmar) and control of armed forces to establish several operational centers in places like Laukkai. According to the verdict, these spaces served to recruit and provide armed cover for 'investors' or 'sponsors', whose groups carried out telecommunications and internet fraud activities, casino operations, drug trafficking, and the organization of prostitution networks. The court noted that the capital involved in gambling and fraud activities exceeded 10 billion yuan ($1.404 billion, 1.2 billion euros). It also established that, in collusion with another fraud group, people related to the fraud who attempted to flee or resisted orders were killed or injured, with a toll of ten dead and two injured. Cyber scam centers proliferated in Myanmar in border zones with China following the February 2021 coup, which created great instability in the country and favored the action of all kinds of organized crime bands. Asked about these executions, the Chinese Foreign Ministry emphasized this Thursday that China has long maintained active cooperation with Myanmar and other countries to combat cross-border telecommunications and internet fraud. Spokesman Guo Jiakun stated that these actions aim to 'eradicate the scourge of illegal online gambling and telecommunications fraud', protect the safety of people and their property, and maintain order in regional exchanges and cooperation, and added that China will continue to 'deepen international law enforcement cooperation' against such crimes. According to a United Nations report, at least 120,000 people are detained in centers in Myanmar where they are forced to carry out internet scams, while in Cambodia, the other epicenter of these crimes, the number is estimated at around 100,000. These are closed complexes, similar to prisons, where these people, deceived by false job offers, are forced to commit online scams from a computer, suffering 'extreme violence', international authorities have explained. In recent years, China has pressured the Myanmar military junta and conducted several operations with it to dismantle some of these human trafficking networks, after which hundreds of extraditions of accused individuals to the Asian giant have taken place.