MANHATTAN (CN) — Guo Wengui, the self-exiled Chinese media mogul with ties to the MAGA movement, was found guilty on Tuesday****on charges that he duped his supporters out of more than $1 billion under the veil of anti-communist advocacy.
The split verdict came after roughly seventeen hours of deliberation spanning****three days, before the jury returned a verdict convicting him on nine criminal fraud and conspiracy counts, but acquitting him on three counts.
The jury found Guo not guilty on counts of wire and securities fraud related to the Chinese media platform GTV, and one count of unlawful monetary transaction.
His sentencing is set for November 19.
Guo founded GTV, an anti-censorship enterprise, alongside former Trump White House advisor Steve Bannon. The pair appeared to be friends — Bannon was arrested by federal agents on Guo’s yacht in 2020 on fraud charges.
Guo, also known as Ho Wan Kwok and Miles Guo, has been in custody since was he arrested in March 2023.
Shortly after he was arrested, Guo’s penthouse apartment at the posh Sherry-Netherland Hotel on 5th Avenue in Manhattan spontaneously caught on fire while investigators were still in the apartment.
He spent the past seven weeks standing trial in Manhattan federal court, where prosecutors argued that he built a loyal online following through relentless activism against the Chinese Communist Party, then bilked them out of their savings with sham investment opportunities into his businesses.
Prosecutors argued that Guo made false promises on livestreams to his followers, guaranteeing them big returns if they chose to invest in his projects and assuring them that he’d be personally responsible for any losses.
“If anyone loses money, please come to me. I will be responsible,” Guo said in one video broadcast played to the court.
But the government elicited testimony from numerous investors who insisted that the opposite was true. One witness, Jenny Li, told jurors in June that she took out a second mortgage on her home to dump $100,000 total in Guo’s businesses, including GTV.
Far from the big returns Guo promised, Li said she was eventually left with “nothing” after investing — other than a $20,000 refund from the Securities and Exchange Commission.
“Miles Guo stole my money,” she testified.
Guo also boasted about his wealth to his supporters, enticing them with his life of excess to encourage further investment. But prosecutors said that Guo actually bought his sports cars, pricey homes and designer suits with fraud proceeds from his investors, making his luxurious lifestyle just another side to the scam.
“He’s just a liar,” investor witness Minran Ru told the court in June. “He’s very good at acting and cheating.”
Guo’s lawyers attributed the flaunting as an attempt to “spit in the eye of the CCP.”
“It is not a crime to be wealthy,” Guo’s attorney Sidhardha Kamaraju said during summations.
The defense held that Guo was driven at every step by his political activism, not by the desire to make money. Guo claims that he was ruthlessly targeted by the Chinese ruling party for his advocacy, and that his supporters sent him money to spread that message.
Guo even elicited testimony from disgraced former Justice Department employee George Higginbotham, who told the jury that he colluded with Chinese officials to illegally lobby the Trump administration to deport Guo to China.
“It’s not a racketeering enterprise,” Kamaraju said of Guo’s business empire. “It’s a political one.”
The government agreed that Guo was indeed targeted by the Chinese Communist Party, but argues that this is irrelevant to the jury since this is a fraud case.
“It doesn’t give him a license to rob these people,” assistant U.S. attorney Ryan Finkel said during the prosecution’s closing summation last week.
The verdict didn’t come without its difficulties. On Friday, the court excused one juror after she revealed that she had illicitly googled William Je, Guo’s at-large co-defendant, before deliberations started that morning.
U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres sent the juror home, replaced her with an alternate and instructed the jury to restart the deliberation process.
Guo left China in 2014 during an anti-corruption crackdown led by President Xi Jinping that ensnared people close to Guo, including a top intelligence official. Chinese authorities seek Guo’s return on claims of rape, kidnapping, bribery and other offenses.
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