A federal judge said Guo’s fraud cost hundreds of millions of dollars to more than 1,000 people worldwide.
Published on June 30, 2026
An exiled Chinese billionaire and business tycoon has been sentenced to 30 years in a U.S. prison for financial fraud that cost more than 1,000 people worldwide hundreds of millions of dollars, according to a federal judge.
Guo Wengui, who fled China a decade ago and reinvented himself in the United States as a critic of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), was sentenced Monday in a Manhattan court by Judge Analisa Torres.
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Guo, once considered one of China’s richest men, was also ordered to forfeit $889 million in compensation.
A jury unanimously found Guo guilty in 2024 of fraud, various securities crimes, wire fraud and money laundering.
The FBI arrested him the year before in his luxury Manhattan apartment overlooking Central Park.
At Monday’s sentencing, Torres said Guo, also known as Miles Guo and Ho Wan Kwok, “took advantage of those who want to bring democracy to China” and took their money so he could live a lavish life.
In court, Guo complained about his health and only briefly discussed the criminal case. He defended his intentions by saying he came to the United States “to destroy the CCP.”
Judge Torres read excerpts from letters she received from victims in which they described losing their savings, feeling deeply afraid and ashamed, and having family members attack them for their poor investment decisions.
Guo, she said, takes no responsibility for his actions, “instead, incredibly, insisting that his behavior caused no loss and harmed no one.”
Wei Chen, a victim who testified at the trial, told Torres that Guo’s fraud was “destroying my life” and that of her family.
Prosecutors had called for a prison sentence of at least 30 years, saying his “astonishing” fraud from 2018 to 2023 “destroyed hundreds of lives” and left “a legacy of victims and families devastated financially, emotionally and psychologically.”
In a court filing, Guo’s lawyers wrote that his client was a victim of the CCP’s “vast, pervasive and life-threatening” persecution.
They said in court papers that a long prison sentence would only confirm China’s smear campaign against Guo and “encourage further efforts to eliminate Chinese dissidents from public life.”
Guo, who made his fortune in real estate, moved to the United States in 2015 after fleeing China.
From his home in New York, he portrayed himself as a fierce critic of the Chinese government and a staunch defender of democracy, while maintaining ties to US right-winger Steve Bannon.
Together, Guo and Bannon formed a lobby group against the CCP, the new state of China.
Bannon was arrested on Guo’s yacht in 2020 in a case involving embezzlement of funds related to a U.S. border wall project on the border with Mexico, a flagship promise of U.S. President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
