Guo Wengui, an outspoken critic of China’s government and erstwhile business associate of former White House adviser Steve Bannon, was convicted on Tuesday in US federal court on charges of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from online followers.
Prosecutors in Manhattan said Guo raised more than US$1 billion by guaranteeing followers on social media that they would not lose money if they joined him in what the indictment against him called “a series of complex fraudulent and fictitious businesses and investment opportunities”.
Having built a large following on social media, in which he made many unsupported accusations against high-ranking Chinese officials, Guo – who is known by several names, including Miles Kwok and Ho Wan Kwok – had claimed that some of the funds these ventures generated were meant “to advance a movement against the Chinese Communist Party”.
The jury found Guo guilty on all 12 counts against him, including racketeering, securities fraud, wire fraud and money laundering, in a trial that lasted seven weeks. He had pleaded not guilty to all of the charges.
Guo has been jailed in New York since his March 2023 arrest. US District Judge Analisa Torres could send him to prison for decades when he is sentenced on November 19.
The defendant “brazenly operated several interrelated fraud schemes, all designed to fleece his loyal followers out of their hard-earned money so that Guo could spend his days in his 50,000 square foot mansion, driving his US$1 million Lamborghini or lounging on his US$37 million yacht,” the prosecution team led by Juliana Murray announced shortly after the verdict.
“I commend the career prosecutors of this office and our law enforcement partners for bringing this case and seizing hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of fraud proceeds so that justice can be brought to Guo’s victims,” they said.
Some of the high-priced items that Murray’s team said Guo spent the money on included a New Jersey mansion, a red Lamborghini and a yacht.
Named “Lady May”, the luxury boat made headlines in 2020 when Bannon, a one-time political strategist for former US president Donald Trump, was arrested aboard the vessel on unrelated federal charges. Bannon was later pardoned by Trump, but is now serving a four-month sentence in federal prison for defying a congressional subpoena.
Guo “preyed on the pliable, followers who believed the messages he espoused in his hours of broadcasts,” Reuters quoted Murray as saying while addressing the jury last week.
Guo’s lawyer Sidhardha Kamaraju claimed that his client flaunted his wealth as part of a political critique of the Chinese Communist Party, according to Reuters.
“Mr Guo didn’t care about the money,” Kamaraju was quoted as saying. “He cared about the movement.”
Murray countered that “at least one of the reasons he loved [the movement] is because it was his personal piggy bank,” according to Reuters.
Kamaraju did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Bannon and Guo had partnered on media ventures and made names for themselves as some of the Trump era’s most vocal opponents of the Chinese government. Guo has also been accused of being a spy for Beijing.
In 2021, three of Guo’s media companies – GTV Media Group, Saraca Media Group and Voice of Guo Media Inc, which were cited in the indictment against him – were ordered by a judge to pay US$539 million in penalties related to illegal cryptocurrency sales.
Guo was also said to be behind Trump’s new social media app, called GETTR, which the former president started after being barred from mainstream American platforms like Twitter and Facebook after inciting the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol. The app eventually evolved into Truth Social, the primary asset of Trump Media & Technology Group.
