MANHATTAN (CN) — Federal prosecutors on Tuesday rested their case against Guo Wengui, the Chinese businessman accused of building a massive anti-communist following, then bilking them out of more than $1 billion.
Prosecutors say that Guo, also known as Ho Wan Kwok and Miles Guo, framed his various companies as lucrative investment opportunities for his supporters. Those companies included G CLUBS, a luxury travel and event service, and G FASHION, Guo’s personal clothing brand that hawked $200 baseball hats and $800 silk pants.
His fervent anti-communist advocacy made him a darling to the American Right — Guo and his closest allies frequently appear on conservative news networks like Real America’s Voice. In 2020, Guo went into business with Trump White House aide Steve Bannon when they started GTV, a video streaming service targeted toward those weary of government censorship.
Promoting his own luxurious lifestyle to his fans, Guo promised big returns and opulent perks to those who chose to invest in his projects. In reality, prosecutors claim that he was skimming investor cash from his businesses to fund his life of excess.
It has been nearly six weeks since the government started presenting its case to Manhattan jurors. Prosecutors presented testimony from a number of purported fraud victims, who collectively dumped millions of dollars into Guo’s business ventures.
“Miles Guo stole my money,” witness Jenny Li testified last month.
Li’s story echoed that of several government witnesses. Disillusioned by the Chinese Communist Party, she gravitated toward Guo after hearing him on the radio in 2017. Before she knew it, she was a fervent fan, and took out a second mortgage on her home to invest thousands of dollars into Guo’s various anti-communist projects.
Witness testimony revealed that Guo appeared to have a godlike hold over his thousands of followers. Many watched him speak several times per day via live stream, and never hesitated to give him money when the opportunity arose.
“I believed whatever he said,” Li testified.
In total, Li lost most of the $100,000 she sunk into Guo’s companies — much like Le Zhou, another government witness who said he invested around the same amount of cash and wound up more than $30,000 in the hole.
“I wanted to be a part of it. So I invested,” Zhou testified in May.
According to court filings, Guo’s defense team hopes to elicit testimony from “non-victim” investors in an effort to counter stories from Li, Zhou and other government witnesses. But prosecutors asked U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres to block such testimony as unduly prejudicial.
“The fact that certain individuals did not recognize — and some, even still to this day, do not recognize — that they were victims of a fraud is irrelevant and has no bearing on what the government is required to prove at trial,” prosecutors wrote in a June filing. “For that reason, the probative value of any such testimony is nonexistent, while the risk of confusing the issues before the jury and unfairly prejudicing the government is high.”
Guo’s lawyers will also look to call George Higginbotham, a former Justice Department employee who pleaded guilty in 2018 to lobbying on behalf of foreign interests, to testify about his conspiracy to persuade the Trump administration to repatriate Guo back to China in 2017. His testimony, which is partially opposed by the government, would speak to Guo’s claims that he is being targeted by the Chinese Communist Party and truly believes the vision he’s selling to his supporters.
Still, Guo is up against damning testimony from not just his disgruntled investors, but from several former employees as well. One ex-aide, Ya Li, was part of Guo’s “Iron Blood Group,” the name he gave his closest inner circle.
Now a cooperator for the government, Li testified last month that Guo’s “whole movement is a scam.”
The defense team started calling witnesses Tuesday. First to the stand was expert witness Raymond Dragon, who testified about the appraisal value of Guo’s GTV venture with Bannon.
Guo is criminally charged with racketeering conspiracy, wire fraud, securities fraud, international money laundering and other counts. If convicted, he could be sentenced to more than 200 years in prison or be deported to China, where he is wanted on accusations of rape, kidnapping and bribery.
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