On this courtroom sketch, Guo Wengui, Chinese language enterprise tycoon, makes his sentencing assertion at Manhattan federal court docket in New York, Monday, June 29, 2026.
Elizabeth Williams/AP
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Elizabeth Williams/AP
NEW YORK — A self-exiled billionaire Chinese language enterprise tycoon as soon as believed to be amongst China’s wealthiest males was sentenced Monday to 30 years in a U.S. jail for an enormous monetary fraud {that a} federal decide mentioned value over 1,000 individuals worldwide a whole bunch of hundreds of thousands of {dollars}.
Guo Wengui, who fled China a decade in the past and reinvented himself as a U.S.-based Communist Celebration critic, was sentenced in a Manhattan courtroom packed together with his supporters by Choose Analisa Torres. She mentioned he “preyed on those seeking to bring Democracy to China,” taking their cash so he might reside lavishly.
Earlier than he was sentenced, Guo protested his remedy in jail, saying he was taken to the hospital early Monday. He disputed a prosecutor’s portrayal of him as a malinger faking sickness, saying he repeatedly vomited as he was returned to jail earlier than being dropped at court docket.
“When I came here, I said: ‘I have a tummy ache, I need to go to the bathroom, I don’t feel well,'” Guo mentioned by way of an interpreter of his courthouse arrival. Later, Guo wiped his mouth repeatedly with a tissue.
He solely briefly addressed the prison case, defending his intentions by saying in reference to the Chinese language Communist Celebration: “The reason I came to the U.S. was to destroy the CCP.”
The decide, in sentencing him, learn snippets of letters she acquired from victims who described dropping their life financial savings and feeling severely anxious and shamed and having members of the family activate them for his or her poor funding selection.
Torres mentioned Guo “takes no responsibility for his actions and instead insists incredibly his conduct caused no loss and harmed no one.” She mentioned he “has called upon supporters to harass and intimidate those who dare to speak out against him.”
The decide ordered Guo to forfeit $889 million in restitution.
Wei Chen, a sufferer who testified at trial, advised Torres that Guo’s fraud “destroyed my life” and that of her household.
As Guo left the courtroom after the sentencing, supporters applauded and shouted towards him.
FILE – A Twitter web page of Chinese language exiled businessman Guo Wengui is seen on a pc display screen in Beijing, Aug. 30, 2017.
Andy Wong/AP
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Andy Wong/AP
Earlier than his arrest and detention with out bail three years in the past, Guo grew so near conservative political strategist Steve Bannon that they introduced a joint initiative to overthrow the Chinese language authorities in 2020. He lived in a luxurious house overlooking Central Park and had joined President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Florida golf membership.
Prosecutors had requested he serve not less than 30 years in jail, saying his “astonishing” fraud from 2018 to 2023 “destroyed hundreds of lives” and left “a wreckage of victims and families who have been devastated financially, emotionally, and psychologically.”
Prosecutors mentioned in court docket papers that his ill-gotten riches fueled “a lifestyle of extraordinary excess and indulgence, a gilded life of mansions, yachts, race cars, designer clothes and luxury furnishings.”
Guo was convicted of 9 of 12 prison expenses throughout a seven-week trial that prosecutors mentioned showcased his deception of 1000’s of traders in bogus offers that enabled Guo’s lavish way of life.
In a court docket submitting, Guo’s attorneys wrote that he was the sufferer of the Chinese language Communist Celebration’s “grand, pervasive, and life threatening” pursuit of him. They alleged that the celebration recruited elites in U.S. enterprise, leisure and politics to conspire in opposition to him.
They mentioned in presentence court docket papers {that a} prolonged jail time period would solely validate China’s smear marketing campaign and “embolden further efforts to eliminate Chinese dissidents from public life” whereas defendants in related circumstances acquired jail phrases of two-to-four years.
The attorneys famous {that a} court docket probation officer wrote to the sentencing decide that Guo, also referred to as Miles Guo and Ho Wan Kwok, had scars and disfigurements from bodily torture he endured in China and subsequent surgical procedures he underwent from 1993 to 2022 to restore the accidents.
Protection attorneys mentioned Guo’s wealth grew as his household grew to become the biggest shareholder of China’s largest publicly traded securities firm, however he grew to become a goal of Chinese language authorities officers as he uncovered them as corrupt. Finally, the attorneys wrote, Guo moved to Hong Kong, London after which New York in 2017.
Chinese language authorities accused him of rape, kidnapping, bribery and different crimes, however Guo mentioned these allegations had been false.
Prosecutors say Guo satisfied a whole bunch of 1000’s of individuals to take a position greater than $1 billion, complete, in entities he managed, together with his media firm, GTV Media Group Inc., and his so-called Himalaya Farm Alliance and the Himalaya Alternate.
Guo, the federal government alleged in presentence court docket papers, was “entirely unrepentant” for his crimes after he took benefit of lax U.S. asylum legal guidelines to flourish in America.
