Chinese tycoon Guo Wengui sentenced to 30 years for $1B fraud in New York
Self-exiled billionaire Guo Wengui was sentenced to 30 years in a US federal prison for defrauding over 1,000 victims of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Chinese tycoon jailed 30 years for billion-dollar fraud scheme targeting democracy activists
A self-exiled Chinese billionaire who reinvented himself as a Communist Party critic was sentenced Monday to 30 years in a US federal prison for orchestrating a massive financial fraud that cost more than 1,000 people worldwide hundreds of millions of dollars, AP News reports.
Guo Wengui, also known as Miles Guo and Ho Wan Kwok, received his sentence at a Manhattan federal court from Judge Analisa Torres. The courtroom was packed with his supporters.
Torres said Guo had "preyed on those seeking to bring Democracy to China," siphoning their money to fund a lavish personal lifestyle. She read excerpts from victim letters describing lost life savings, severe anxiety, shame, and fractured family relationships caused by poor investment decisions made in Guo's schemes.
"He takes no responsibility for his actions and instead insists incredibly his conduct caused no loss and harmed no one," Torres said. She added that Guo had "called upon supporters to harass and intimidate those who dare to speak out against him."
The judge ordered Guo to forfeit $889 million in restitution.
Vomiting claims and a brief defence
Before sentencing, Guo complained of his treatment in jail, stating he had been taken to hospital earlier that Monday. He disputed prosecutors' claims that he was faking illness, saying he had vomited repeatedly before being brought to 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 through an interpreter. He wiped his mouth with a tissue several times during the proceedings.
He addressed the criminal case only briefly, saying: "The reason I came to the U.S. was to destroy the CCP."
Victim Wei Chen, who had testified at trial, told Torres that Guo's fraud "destroyed my life" and that of her family. As Guo was escorted out after sentencing, supporters in the courtroom applauded and shouted toward him.
A decade of self-exile and political alliances
Guo fled China roughly a decade ago and established himself in the United States, where he cultivated ties with prominent conservative figures. Before his arrest and detention without bail three years ago, he grew close to political strategist Steve Bannon, and the two announced a joint initiative in 2020 aimed at overthrowing the Chinese government. Guo lived in a luxury apartment overlooking Central Park and had joined President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago golf club in Florida.
Prosecutors said his fraud ran from 2018 to 2023, describing it as "astonishing" and saying it "destroyed hundreds of lives," leaving behind "a wreckage of victims and families who have been devastated financially, emotionally, and psychologically." They alleged his ill-gotten wealth financed "a lifestyle of extraordinary excess and indulgence, a gilded life of mansions, yachts, race cars, designer clothes and luxury furnishings."
Prosecutors said Guo convinced hundreds of thousands of people to invest more than $1 billion in total across entities he controlled, including GTV Media Group Inc., the so-called Himalaya Farm Alliance, and the Himalaya Exchange.
Nine of twelve counts
Guo was convicted of nine of twelve criminal charges following a seven-week trial that prosecutors said exposed his systematic deception of thousands of investors through bogus deals.
His defence lawyers argued in court filings that Guo was himself a victim — of the Chinese Communist Party's "grand, pervasive, and life threatening" pursuit of him. They alleged that the party had recruited elites in US business, entertainment and politics to conspire against him, and that a lengthy prison term would only validate Beijing's smear campaign and "embolden further efforts to eliminate Chinese dissidents from public life." They noted that defendants in comparable cases had received sentences of two to four years.
The defence also pointed to a probation officer's report stating that Guo bore scars and disfigurements from physical torture he endured in China, with subsequent surgeries performed between 1993 and 2022. Lawyers described how Guo's family became the largest shareholder of China's largest publicly traded securities company, but said he became a government target after exposing officials as corrupt — prompting him to move from Hong Kong to London and then to New York in 2017.
Chinese authorities had previously accused Guo of rape, kidnapping, bribery and other crimes. Guo denied those allegations.
Prosecutors, in their presentence papers, wrote that Guo was "entirely unrepentant" and had exploited what they described as lax US asylum laws to flourish in America.
Source: Google News MT