Guo Wengui gets 30 years for fraud

Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui, a self-exiled business tycoon who recast himself in the United States as a fierce critic of the Chinese Communist Party, was sentenced Monday to 30 years in federal prison for a financial fraud that a judge said cost more than 1,000 people worldwide hundreds of millions of dollars.

U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres imposed the sentence in a packed Manhattan courtroom and ordered Guo to forfeit $889 million in restitution. Torres said Guo “preyed on those seeking to bring Democracy to China,” taking their money to fund an extravagant lifestyle.

Guo, also known as Miles Guo and Ho Wan Kwok, was convicted after a seven-week trial of nine of 12 criminal charges. Al Jazeera reported that a jury unanimously found him guilty in 2024 of fraud, various securities offenses, wire fraud and money laundering. The FBI arrested him the year before at his luxury Manhattan apartment overlooking Central Park.

Prosecutors said Guo’s fraud ran from 2018 to 2023 and persuaded hundreds of thousands of people to invest more than $1 billion in entities he controlled, including GTV Media Group Inc., the Himalaya Farm Alliance and the Himalaya Exchange. In court papers, prosecutors described the scheme as “astonishing” and said it “destroyed hundreds of lives,” leaving “a wreckage of victims and families who have been devastated financially, emotionally, and psychologically.”

They said Guo used the proceeds to support “a lifestyle of extraordinary excess and indulgence, a gilded life of mansions, yachts, race cars, designer clothes and luxury furnishings.”

Before he was sentenced, Guo complained about his treatment in jail and said he had been taken to a hospital earlier Monday. Speaking through an interpreter, he disputed a prosecutor’s portrayal of him as feigning illness and said he repeatedly vomited after being returned to jail before court.

“When I came here, I said: ‘I have a tummy ache, I need to go to the bathroom, I don’t feel well,’” Guo said. He addressed the criminal case only briefly, saying of the Chinese Communist Party: “The reason I came to the U.S. was to destroy the CCP.”

Torres read portions of letters from victims who said they had lost their life savings, felt intense anxiety and shame, and had family members turn against them over their investment decisions. The judge said Guo “takes no responsibility for his actions and instead insists incredibly his conduct caused no loss and harmed no one.” She also said he “has called upon supporters to harass and intimidate those who dare to speak out against him.”

Wei Chen, a victim who testified at trial, told the judge that Guo’s fraud “destroyed my life” and that of her family. As Guo left the courtroom, supporters applauded and shouted toward him.

Guo’s lawyers argued in court filings that he was the target of the Chinese Communist Party’s “grand, pervasive, and life threatening” pursuit. They said a long prison sentence would validate China’s smear campaign and “embolden further efforts to eliminate Chinese dissidents from public life.” They also said Guo had scars and disfigurements from torture in China and surgeries from 1993 to 2022.

Defense lawyers said Guo became a target after exposing corrupt Chinese officials. Chinese authorities accused him of rape, kidnapping, bribery and other crimes, allegations Guo has denied.

Before his arrest and detention without bail, Guo had close ties to conservative strategist Steve Bannon. The two announced an initiative in 2020 aimed at overthrowing the Chinese government, and Al Jazeera reported they formed the anti-CCP lobbying group the New Federal State of China. Bannon was arrested in 2020 on Guo’s yacht in an unrelated case involving funds tied to a U.S.-Mexico border wall project.