Judge Analisa Torres read from the victims’ letters before she passed sentence. People wrote of lost life savings, of anxiety and shame, of relatives who turned on them for backing the wrong investment. Then she gave Guo Wengui 30 years.
The self-exiled Chinese billionaire, also known as Miles Guo and Ho Wan Kwok, was sentenced Monday in a packed Manhattan courtroom. Torres said his fraud cost more than 1,000 people worldwide hundreds of millions of dollars. She ordered him to forfeit $889 million.
“He preyed on those seeking to bring Democracy to China,” the judge said, accusing him of taking their money so he could live lavishly. She also said Guo “takes no responsibility for his actions and instead insists incredibly his conduct caused no loss and harmed no one,” and that he “has called upon supporters to harass and intimidate those who dare to speak out against him.”
What prosecutors said
Prosecutors had asked for at least 30 years. They called the fraud, which ran from 2018 to 2023, “astonishing” and said it “destroyed hundreds of lives.” Court papers described what the money bought: mansions, yachts, race cars, designer clothes.
The government says Guo persuaded hundreds of thousands of people to put more than $1 billion into entities he controlled. Those included his media company GTV Media Group, the Himalaya Farm Alliance and the Himalaya Exchange. A jury convicted him on nine of 12 counts after a seven-week trial. Prosecutors also called him “entirely unrepentant” and said he exploited lax U.S. asylum laws.
Wei Chen, a victim who testified at trial, told Torres the fraud “destroyed my life” and her family’s.
The defense
Guo’s lawyers argued that he is a target of the Chinese Communist Party, which they said recruited elites in U.S. business, entertainment and politics to conspire against him. A long sentence, they wrote, would validate China’s smear campaign and “embolden further efforts to eliminate Chinese dissidents from public life.” They noted that defendants in similar cases got two to four years.
They also pointed to a probation officer’s letter saying Guo has scars and disfigurements from torture in China and from surgeries between 1993 and 2022. Chinese authorities have accused him of rape, kidnapping and bribery. Guo says those allegations are false.
Guo in court
Before sentencing, Guo complained about his treatment in jail. He said he had been taken to a hospital early Monday and vomited repeatedly on the way back. A prosecutor had described him as faking illness. “When I came here, I said: ‘I have a tummy ache, I need to go to the bathroom, I don’t feel well,’” he said through an interpreter. He wiped his mouth with a tissue several times.
On the charges he said little: “The reason I came to the U.S. was to destroy the CCP.”
Before his arrest three years ago, Guo had grown close to Steve Bannon, and the two announced a joint plan in 2020 to overthrow the Chinese government. He lived in a luxury apartment overlooking Central Park and had joined Mar-a-Lago.
Supporters applauded and shouted as he left the courtroom. China’s Foreign Ministry said Monday that it had noted the sentence, that Guo is wanted by Beijing, and that an Interpol Red Notice is out for him.
