They had just been handed over from Myanmar, the latest in scores of arrests of those accused of running scam centres in a town on the north-eastern border with China.

The two were Ming Guoping and Ming Zhenzhen, son and granddaughter of one of the powerful warlords who have run the town of Laukkaing for the past 14 years.

A sudden escalation of the conflict in Myanmar has spelled the end of the Chinese mafia - the Godfather-esque "four families" - in this notoriously lawless border town.

The four families owed their control of Laukkaing to none other than Min Aung Hlaing, the military commander who led the 2021 coup and still heads the junta.

Back in 2009, Min Aung Hlaing led a military operation to oust the then-dominant warlord in Laukkaing, a veteran fighter called Peng Jiasheng.

Devastation from the air in Myanmar's brutal civil war
He wanted to install allies more compliant to the needs of the then-military government, which at the time was putting pressure on all of Myanmar's ethnic insurgent groups to transform themselves into pro-government so-called border guard forces.

Most refused, including Peng, even though the military had promised in return that they would be allowed to continue making money from illegal businesses like narcotics.

Peng was part of a generation of warlords in Shan State who emerged in the chaos of the post-independence years in Myanmar, when the central government's authority did not extend to most border regions.