China executed 11 people it said were convicted in connection with the killing of 14 Chinese citizens and the operation of scam and gambling activities worth more than $1 billion, authorities said.
The Wenzhou city Intermediate People’s Court announced the executions in a statement on Thursday. The court said the 11 men and women had been sentenced to death in September.
The court said the group included Ming Guoping and Ming Zhenzhen, members of the Ming family whom it found led the scam and gambling operations. It also named Zhou Weichang, Wu Hongming and Luao Jianzhang as other key members of the operations, according to the court statement.
The group filed an appeal, which the court rejected in November, the report said. It added that court documents were not made public at the time.
Chinese authorities detained members of the group in November 2023, after exerting pressure on authorities in border areas shared with Myanmar to crack down on scams, the report said. It described scam parks in Southeast Asia as an industrial-scale business, especially in Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos.
The report said authorities in the region face growing international pressure, including from China and the U.S., as well as other nations, to address the proliferation of criminal activity.