Self-exiled Chinese businessman Guo Wengui has been convicted by a US court of defrauding his online followers in a billion-dollar scam.
He was found guilty on nine of the 12 criminal charges brought against him, including racketeering, fraud, and money laundering.
Guo’s sentencing is scheduled for November 19, where he faces the possibility of decades in prison. He has been incarcerated since his arrest in March 2023.
A vocal critic of the Chinese Communist Party, Guo was once associated with Stephen Bannon, the former White House chief strategist under President Donald Trump.
Guo is known by various aliases, including Miles Guo, Miles Kwok, and “Brother Seven”. When indicted in 2023, he was named as Ho Wan Kwok.
According to prosecutors, Guo managed to raise over $1 billion from online followers who participated in his investment and cryptocurrency schemes between 2018 and 2023.
They alleged that the funds raised were used to support Guo’s extravagant lifestyle, which included a 50,000 square foot mansion, a $1 million Lamborghini, and a $37 million yacht.
“Thousands of Guo’s online followers were victimised so that Guo could live a life of excess,” the US Attorney in Manhattan, Damian Williams, said after the verdict.
Guo’s political activism and his connections to prominent right-wing US politicians and activists attracted hundreds of thousands of online followers, primarily Chinese expatriates living in Western countries.
During his trial, Guo’s defense team attempted unsuccessfully to persuade the jury that their client’s motives were not financially driven. Instead, they portrayed him as a staunch critic of China’s political regime, asserting that his extravagant lifestyle was a form of protest against the Chinese Communist Party.
After arriving in the US in 2017, Guo’s vocal opposition to China’s government led to several collaborations with Bannon. They frequently appeared together in online videos, and in 2020, they co-founded the New Federal State of China movement, aimed at toppling the Chinese Communist Party.
In a separate incident later that year, Bannon was arrested for an unrelated fraud case while aboard Guo’s yacht in Connecticut. He was subsequently pardoned by then-President Donald Trump but is currently serving a four-month sentence for contempt of Congress.