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Guo Wengui, the businessman and Chinese Communist party critic who fled to New York and allied himself with prominent China hawks, including Donald Trump and Steve Bannon, has been convicted for conducting a $1bn fraud on his online followers.
In a unanimous verdict on Tuesday, Ho Wan Kwok, who is known by a string of pseudonyms including “Guo Wengui” and “Miles Guo”, was found guilty of racketeering, fraud and money laundering charges by a Manhattan jury. He was acquitted on three other charges.
Damian Williams, the US attorney for the southern district of New York, whose office brought the case, said Guo, once a social media personality, fleeced his “loyal followers out of their hard-earned money so that [he] could spend his days in his 50,000 square foot mansion, driving his $1mn Lamborghini, or lounging on his $37mn yacht”.
Guo was arrested last year and accused by prosecutors of lying to people who invested in a series of his business ventures, including his “citizen journalism” media company, an elite membership service and a purported new cryptocurrency.
The self-exiled entrepreneur came to the US from China in 2014 and allied himself with overseas dissidents and China hawks, including Bannon, the former adviser to Trump. Bannon was arrested on fraud charges in 2020 while on Guo’s yacht. (Bannon was later pardoned by Trump, but subsequently charged in a separate fraud case in state court.)
In 2020, Guo solicited $452mn for his media venture, GTV, via an unregistered securities offering that was backed by 5,500 supporters, according to prosecutors, and went on to raise a further $150mn through loans he said would be convertible into GTV stock.
He also raised $250mn for a membership programme offering “a gateway to carefully curated world-class products, services and experiences”, and another $262mn for a cryptocurrency project called the Himalaya Exchange.
The money was used to fund a lavish lifestyle, prosecutors alleged in an almost two-month trial. In closing arguments last week, assistant US attorney Ryan Finkel played an expletive-laden tape in which Guo is heard berating his colleagues who are refusing to move tens of millions of dollars out of one of his ventures without consulting the board.
“That’s the real Miles Guo,” Finkel said. “The person [he] never thought his followers would hear.” He added that the entrepreneur sprouted “devious lies to trick his followers into giving him money”.
Attorneys for Guo, who had pleaded not guilty, said he was a committed anti-Communist campaigner and the funds were for political purposes. A lawyer for Guo declined to comment on Tuesday’s verdict.
Guo will be sentenced later this year. He could face decades in prison.