Big Circle Gang

The Big Circle Gang or Big Circle Boys is a Chinese triad. In 2009, the Big Circle Boys were described as "one of the largest and most sophisticated criminal conspiracies" in Canada.

The gang established in the prison camps of China in the late 1960s before relocating to Hong Kong in the 1970s. They were given the moniker "Big Circle Gang" and were formed by former members of the Red Guards, a paramilitary organization established by Mao Zedong during the Cultural Revolution. After Mao eventually ordered a crackdown on the Red Guards using the People's Liberation Army (PLA), many former members of the organization were imprisoned in China. However, some former Red Guards fled as refugees to Hong Kong, where they "turned their military prowess to crime", according to a Canadian court record, forming the triad known as the Big Circle Gang.

In 1968, Mao turned against the Red Guards he had formed in 1966 as part of the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution". The Red Guards, notorious for their cruelty and destructive antics, had become too violent even for Mao. A number of Red Guards were arrested and sent to prison camps as Mao now disavowed them for following his orders. The former Red Guards were imprisoned in squalid camps around the city of Guangzhou to be "reeducated", where they formed a gang that competed with the millions of other prisoners for food. In Chinese maps, prison camps were marked with a red circle, which led to the gang adopting the red circle as their symbol.

Between 1969 and 1975, a number of the former Red Guards turned Big Circle Boys were released or escaped, most fled to the British colony of Hong Kong. The general amorality and cynicism of the Big Circle Boys came from their disillusionment with Mao's government for being sent to prison camps for merely following their orders. In Hong Kong, the Big Circle Boys were known for their clannish qualities formed out of common experiences in the Red Guard and in the prison camps, well planned raids, use of guns in their crimes and their extreme violence. The gang targeted jewelry stores, payroll offices, and casinos. The Royal Hong Kong Police gave the gang the nickname of dai huen jai (Cantonese for "Big Circle Boys"), a nickname that stuck.

The gang expanded out of Hong Kong in the 1980s, settling operations in the Netherlands and Great Britain. The gang also became active in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia and in the greater Toronto area in Canada. The Big Circle Boys were the first triad to originate in the People's Republic of China that operated in Canada, as the prior triads came from Hong Kong or Taiwan. Some of the Big Circle Boys came to Canada as illegal immigrants owing to their lengthy criminal records in Hong Kong, but came legally by claiming refugee status. By the late 1980s, the Big Circle Boys were notorious in the Chinatowns of both Vancouver and Toronto for their armed robberies of businesses, home invasions, and their practice of kidnapping wealthy Chinese-Canadians to force their families to pay hefty ransoms.

The Big Circle Boys use some of the traditional ranks, rituals and iconography of the triads, which date to the 17th century. The triads were founded as "patriotic societies" to resist the Manchu Qing dynasty that conquered China in 1644. To fund their anti-Qing revolution, the triads turned to crime, which ultimately led them to abandon their original revolutionary mission for gangsterism. The triads tended to feature elaborate iconography, which recalls their 17th century origins as the "patriotic societies". The Canadian criminologist Steven Schneider wrote: "They are devoid of the structure, initiation ceremony, formal membership or rituals that characterize the traditional triads." The Big Circle Boys are more of a brand than a formal gang, consisting of numerous gangs made up of 10-30 people scattered around the world that are united by their common use of the red circle symbol. The strength of the Big Circle Boys is in the international networking as the Big Circle Boys have members in China, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and all over the world.

By the early 1990s, the Big Circle Boys had moved up from robberies to more profitable crimes as prostitution, human trafficking, drug smuggling, loansharking, credit card fraud, and the counterfeiting of currency, computer software, and films. The Big Circle Boys dominate digital piracy of films and music in Canada along with the counterfeiting and real estate fraud. Sergeant Jim Fisher, an Asian crime expert with the Vancouver police service in a 1998 interview called the Big Circle Boys a sophisticated gang who operate very much like businessmen and learn from their mistakes. Fisher recalled arresting one Big Circle Boy who had the entire transcript of his trial for credit card fraud with him as he was studying how the Crown convicted him.

Using connections in Asia, the Big Circle Boys were involved in smuggling heroin from the "Golden Triangle" nations of Burma, Thailand and Laos into Canada, the United States and Europe. The Big Circle Boys would sell the heroin at a markup to Chinese or Vietnamese street gangs who performed the most dangerous and least profitable part of the drug trade. Kon Yu-lueng, aka "Johnny Kon", a Big Circle Boy based in New York City was described by the Drug Enforcement Agency as "probably one of the two or three biggest heroin dealers in the world". In 1985, two couriers from Hong Kong were arrested at Seattle International Airport with 97 kilograms of heroin. One of the couriers fled back to Thailand where he was murdered and another refused to turn state's evidence and name as his employer, leading to him being sentenced to a lengthy prison term. Both couriers worked for Kon. Kon was arrested in 1988 and charged with smuggling 453 kilograms of heroin into the United States between 1984 and 1987.