MANHATTAN (CN) — Jenny Li said she first heard about Guo Wengui on a radio station in 2017. Intrigued by his claims about disclosing corruption in the Chinese Communist Party, Li said she started watching Guo’s other interviews and livestreams.
Before she knew it, Li was a fervent fan. She listened to Guo’s livestreams five or six times per week and started investing tens of thousands of dollars into his business ventures, she testified.
“I believed whatever he said,” Li told a Manhattan courtroom on Tuesday.
She was federal prosecutors' ninth witness in their case against Guo — also known as Ho Wan Kwok and Miles Guo — who is standing trial on charges that he orchestrated a massive international fraud scheme worth more than $1 billion.
Guo is accused of scamming his followers by urging them to invest in his various businesses with the promise of equity, only for those stocks never to be delivered. Prosecutors say Li was one of his victims.
Li, a middle-aged woman who testified in Mandarin through a translator, told the court she invested more than $100,000 total in Guo’s businesses thinking she was getting stocks in return. One of those ventures was GTV, a Chinese video website that Guo founded with former Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon.
As Guo told his followers that GTV would grow bigger than YouTube, promising big gains to any investors, Li poured $20,000 into the company, she said. After that, she invested more than $80,000 into Guo’s other businesses including Himalaya Farm Alliance and G CLUBS, each of which were advertised to come with their own sets of perks and stock options.
In reality, Li said she got “nothing.”
“Miles Guo stole my money,” she testified.
Li said she took out a second mortgage on her home to fund the investments. When it was all said and done, she said she had nothing to show for it other than a less than $20,000 refund from the Securities Exchange Commission and a “very cheap” looking white box filled with cookies, sent to her for her G CLUB investment, that she threw in the trash.
Before that, though, Li said she was a staunch supporter of Guo as she sunk thousands into his projects. It wasn’t until some of her fellow investors started requesting refunds that she said she finally started to grow suspicious of Guo.
Li teared up on the witness stand as she recalled Guo berating one of his investors, a dentist, on a Discord audio call for asking for a refund of his investment. She said that Guo, on more than one occasion, accused refund requesters of being agents of the Chinese Communist Party.
When Li herself voiced concerns to Guo over WhatsApp, she said she was met with silence.
“He just ignored me,” she said.
In 2021, Li said she took to Twitter to voice her displeasure with Guo. She said she wanted to warn other potential investors to steer clear and likened Guo’s business empire to an “organized mafia.”
From his seat at the defense table, Guo watched diligently as Li spoke through her translator. He often sat up straight in his seat, alternating his locked gaze on Li, the jury and speaking counsel.
Li’s Tuesday testimony echoed that of other supposed victims of Guo’s fraud. Last week, investor witness Le Zhou told the court that he also put more than $100,000 into Guo’s businesses. He, too, came out of the experience tens of thousands of dollars short.
Guo is facing criminal counts of racketeering conspiracy, wire fraud, securities fraud and money laundering, among other charges. 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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