Scam compounds have flourished in Myanmar's lawless borderlands, staffed by foreigners -- many of them Chinese -- who say they were trafficked and forced to swindle people online, part of a multibillion-dollar illicit industry.

Beijing has stepped up cooperation with Southeast Asian nations in recent months to crack down on the compounds, and thousands of people have been repatriated to China.

The Wenzhou Intermediate People's Court said on Monday that a family-run criminal organisation had engaged in cyber fraud, drug trafficking, organising prostitution, setting up casinos, and other crimes from 2015.

They had "relied on armed force" to establish multiple compounds in Kokang, the court said in a statement posted on social media.

The court said the group had killed 14 people, including 10 involved in fraud who had tried to escape from the group or disobeyed its management.

It cited one incident in October 2023, when the accused "opened fire" on people at a scam compound to prevent them from being transferred back to China.

The group's operations attracted numerous "financial backers" to whom it provided armed protection, and involved more than 10 billion yuan ($1.4 billion), the court said.

Five of those sentenced to death were granted a two-year reprieve, while another 23 suspects were given prison sentences ranging from five years to life.

In April, the United Nations warned that Chinese and Southeast Asian gangs are raking in tens of billions of dollars a year through cyber scam centres.

The activity, which relies on an army of workers often trafficked and forced to toil in squalid compounds, was spreading to South America, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and some Pacific Islands, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime said.

The UN estimates that hundreds of thousands of people are working in scam centres globally.

By April this year, around 7,000 people from at least two dozen countries had been repatriated from Myanmar.