Chinese businessman Guo Wengui – also known as Miles Guo and several other names – was convicted on nine out of 12 counts for a billion-dollar fraud scheme by a New York jury on Wednesday.
Guo was found guilty of racketeering, money laundering, wire fraud, and securities fraud for allegedly conning thousands of online followers out of more than $1 billion with various investment and cryptocurrency schemes between 2018 and 2023.
Guo allegedly spent the money on what prosecutors called an “extravagant lifestyle,” which included a gigantic mansion, a yacht, expensive sports cars, a portfolio of high-priced real estate, and a vast collection of other luxuries.
U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said on Wednesday that Guo’s “schemes” to lead a “life of excess” by cheating his followers have been “put to an end.”
Guo was a successful real estate developer in China before coming to the United States in 2015 and becoming an outspoken critic of the Chinese Communist Party. He became especially popular among Chinese expatriates who shared his disdain for the regime and were encouraged by his claims to possess information that could bring the Chinese government down.
Guo founded two purportedly “non-profit” organizations in 2018 and established a company called GTV Media Group, Inc. in partnership with former Breitbart News Network executive chairman and Trump White House strategist Steve Bannon, who is also highly critical of the Chinese Communist Party.
According to prosecutors, Guo sold about $452 million in common GTV stock to over 5,500 investors in 2020, promising to grow GTV into a multimedia juggernaut. At one point, he told prospective investors that GTV had “a market value of two billion U.S. dollars.” He also sold investors on a complex network of real estate and other investments, leveraging his reputation as a property mogul and investment genius in China, and touted his own cryptocurrency.
Guo’s victims said they were tricked into spending large sums of money to buy exclusive access to Guo and join a prestigious online investment club he founded. Joining his “inner circle” reportedly cost over $100,000. Some of his marks spoke of taking out second mortgages on their homes to purchase Guo’s expensive, and ultimately worthless, investment products.
“We slowly discovered that he never fulfilled his promises,” one of Guo’s disappointed Chinese expatriate investors told the BBC on Wednesday.
Prosecutors argued Guo siphoned almost all of the money he bilked from investors and political supporters into his incredibly expensive lifestyle. He ended up declaring bankruptcy in 2023, with a purported net worth of less than $100,000.
The prosecution said Guo’s billion-dollar lifestyle was part of the con – a means of convincing his marks that he must be doing fabulously well in the U.S. business environment and they could buy a ticket on his gravy train.
Guo’s lawyers claimed his extravagance was an effort to “spit in the eye of the Chinese Communist Party,” and they argued “it is not a crime to be wealthy.” They said everything Guo did was intended to bring the Chinese Communist Party down and they engineered his eventual downfall.
“It’s not a racketeering enterprise. It’s a political one,” Guo attorney Sidharda Kamaraju told the court.
The jury was unconvinced by this defense, returning guilty verdicts on nine of twelve counts. Several of the convictions carry potential sentences of 20 years in prison or more. He was arrested in March 2023, and has been in detention ever since. His sentencing hearing is scheduled for November 19.
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