Introduction

Tai Huen Chai (大圈仔), Big Circle Boys; For centuries, emperors and warring factions aligned themselves with the various triad groups. The British tried to expel, imprison or kill many triad members during their reign of Hong Kong. In the early 1970s, a new player, the Big Circle Boys emerged. They were given the moniker (大圈仔). The Big Circle Boys originated in China’s paramilitary Red Guards, and after clashing with China’s army in the late 1960s, members were sent to prison in southern China. But some gang members escaped and infiltrated Hong Kong, where they “turned their military prowess to crime,” according to Canadian court records. The gang now thrives among the unregulated factories and underground banks of Guangdong, and especially in the city Guangzhou, also known as Canton, and nicknamed the “Big Circle” after a drawing on a map indicating in which part of China they operated.

They spread rapidly across Canadian cities in the 1990s, and confidential informants say Big Circle Boys are trusted bonding agents among many actors in fluid networks of Asian drug-trafficking.

They controlled much of the Heroin trade in central China and now control a vast percentage of the Heroin and Fentanyl distribution business in the United States and Canada.

The Big Circle Boys are a Transnational Organized Crime syndicate.

On 22 January 2021, as part of Operation Kungur, Dutch police arrested Tse Chi Lop, alleged to have assumed the leadership of the organisation and having taken it to higher levels as Sam Gor (The Company), with the UN's Office on Drugs and Crime putting the larger syndicate's turnover at $8-18 billion in 2018.