Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui has been sentenced to 30 years in prison in the US for massive fraud Court Affairs

A federal judge said Guo’s fraud cost more than 1,000 people around the world hundreds of millions of dollars.

A self-exiled Chinese businessman has been sentenced to 30 years in prison in the United States for a money laundering scheme that a federal judge said cost more than 1,000 people around the world hundreds of millions of dollars.

Guo Wengui, who fled China ten years ago and reinvented himself in the US as an opponent of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), was sentenced Monday in Manhattan court by Judge Analisa Torres.

Guo, once believed to be one of China’s richest men, was ordered to forfeit $889m in restitution.

The court found Guo guilty of fraud, various securities crimes, wire fraud and money laundering in 2024.

The FBI arrested him last year in his Manhattan apartment overlooking Central Park.

In Monday’s ruling, Torres said Guo, also known as Miles Guo and Ho Wan Kwok, “harassed those who want to bring Democracy to China”, taking their money for a better life.

In court, Guo complained about his health and only briefly touched on the issue of terrorism, defending his intentions by saying that he had come to the US to “destroy” the CCP.

Judge Torres read letters he had received from victims, who described losing their savings and feeling anxious and ashamed, and that family members had turned on them because of poor financial decisions.

Guo, he said, took no action for what he had done, “and instead insists, surprisingly, his character was not damaged and he did not hurt anyone”.

Wei Chen, a victim who testified at the trial, told Torres that Guo’s fraud “destroyed my life” and her family.

Prosecutors called for him to be jailed for at least 30 years, saying that his “extraordinary” fraud from 2018 to 2023 “destroyed the lives of hundreds of people” and left “a devastating financial, emotional and psychological impact on the victims and their families”.

In court filings, Guo’s lawyers wrote that his client was the victim of the CCP’s “massive, widespread, and life-threatening” persecution.

He said in court papers that a longer prison term would only confirm China’s campaign against Guo and “reinvigorate efforts to eliminate China’s public opposition”.

Guo, who made his fortune in business, moved to the US in 2015 after fleeing China.

Based in New York, he has established himself as an outspoken critic of the Chinese government and defender of democracy, while maintaining ties to US right-wing activist Steve Bannon.

Together, Guo and Bannon formed a lobbying group against the CCP, the New Federal State of China.

Bannon was arrested in 2020 on Guo’s ship on charges of money laundering linked to the US border project on the border with Mexico, a key campaign promise of US President Donald Trump in 2016.