Exiled Chinese businessman Guo Wengui has been found guilty by a US court of defrauding his online followers in a billion-dollar scam.
He was convicted on nine of the 12 criminal counts he faced, including racketeering, fraud and money laundering.
Guo’s sentencing is scheduled for November 19, when he faces decades behind bars. He has been in prison since his arrest in March 2023.
He is a critic of the Chinese Communist Party and was an associate of Stephen Bannon, former White House chief strategist under former President Donald Trump.
Guo uses several aliases, including Miles Guo, Miles Kwok and “Brother Seven”. He was named Ho Wan Kwok when he was indicted in 2023.
Prosecutors said Guo raised more than $1bn (£770bn) from online followers, who joined him in investment and cryptocurrency projects between 2018 and 2023.
The money he raised was used to fund Guo’s lavish lifestyle, which included a 50,000-square-foot mansion, a $1 million Lamborghini and a $37 million yacht, they said.
“Thousands of Guo’s online followers were victimized so that Guo could live a life of excess,” Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said after the verdict.
Guo’s political activism and connections to prominent American right-wing politicians and activists have earned him hundreds of thousands of online followers, mostly Chinese living in Western countries.
Guo’s lawyers tried unsuccessfully to sway the jury by arguing that their client was not motivated by money.
Instead, they portrayed him as a staunch opponent of the Chinese political system and his ostentatious lifestyle was a criticism of the Chinese Communist Party.
After arriving in the United States in 2017, Guo’s outspoken opposition to China’s leadership inspired several projects with Bannon.
They frequently appeared together in online videos, and in 2020 they launched a campaign called the New Federal State of China, with the aim of overthrowing the Chinese Communist Party.
Later that year, Bannon was arrested on an unrelated fraud charge while on Guo’s yacht in Connecticut. He was later pardoned by then-President Donald Trump.
Bannon is currently serving a four-month sentence for contempt of Congress.
News Source : www.bbc.com
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