BEIJING: In highlighting China’s efforts to get tough on fraud in 2025, the country’s top prosecutors have cast a spotlight on major crime families believed to be based in Myanmar.
The ongoing crackdown on telecommunications fraud has netted some of the most egregious offenders, according to the latest work report released on March 9 by the Supreme People’s Procuratorate (SPP).
“For many years, crime syndicates – dubbed the Four Major Families – in Myanmar’s Kokang region have used weapons to protect their telco fraud criminal activities,” the SPP report said.
“They have also collaborated with financial backers to systematically carry out organised crimes targeted mainly at Chinese citizens and severely infringed upon their lives, property and safety.”
Telco fraud refers to scam operations that lure victims overseas with promises of jobs and subsequently trap them in dens, forcing them to work as scammers to dupe others.
Investigations by Chinese police in 2025 revealed the brutality committed by members of the so-called Four Major Families that took place in the scam farms in Myanmar, including beatings, mutilation and imprisonment.
The victims’ failure to meet their captors’ demands also resulted in deaths.
Myanmar, which borders Yunnan in south-western China, has been named a haven for scam farms.
The report also noted that prosecutors charged 285 members of these Four Major Families in 2025 with crimes such as fraud, intentional homicide, intentional injury, illegal gambling and unlawful detention.
The cases, which were concluded in November and December, resulted in 16 immediate executions, the SPP report noted.
Another 16 were given life sentences, while seven others were sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve, the report added.
A separate report by the Supreme People’s Court (SPC), also released on March 9, showed that the number of cheating cases closed by the courts rose in China to 95,600 – a 6.55 per cent increase from 2024.
It was the only crime in a top 10 list of most common offences in China to register a hike, based on court figures.
Overall, the number of criminal cases ruled on by the courts in China in 2025 fell to 1.56 million, down 7.76 per cent from 2024.
Both work reports were released as part of China’s ongoing annual parliamentary meetings in Beijing, which started on March 4 and will end on March 12.
Both the SPP and the SPC pledged in their reports to further intensify crackdowns on telco fraud in 2026.
According to the SPC, the number of dangerous driving cases – the most common crime in China – fell 15.7 per cent to 232,000 from 2024.
Theft, the country’s second-most common crime, dropped 6.37 per cent to 151,200 court cases ruled on in 2025, compared with the year before.
Serious violent crimes also declined – the number of suspects charged with such offences, including murder, rape and kidnapping, fell to its lowest figure of 54,300 in 2025, according to SPP records that date back to 2006.
In its report, the SPC also singled out a rise in cybersecurity crimes, with the number of cases that were ruled on surging 158.5 per cent to 9,326 in the five years to 2025, compared with the previous period.
These include crimes such as spreading rumours online, cyberviolence and virtual pyramid schemes such as multi-level marketing.
Procurator-General Ying Yong, when delivering the SPP report at the Great Hall of the People, raised the case of how prosecutors in Beijing in October charged five suspects over privacy crimes and the illegal use of information networks.
Between 2023 and 2025, the five suspects “illegally obtained a large volume of citizens’ personal information through the internet and built an online database to sell the data”.
“They also used communication software to set up chat groups where they spread the private information of others and engaged in wanton verbal abuse and insults,” the report added.
Ying said that prosecutors will continue in 2026 to “promote the governance of the online eco-system in accordance with the law”.
Chief Justice Zhang Jun said in his delivery of the SPC report that the courts will further take strong action to intensify crackdowns on organised crime and local gangs. - The Straits Times/ANN
