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Self-exiled Chinese businessman Guo Wengui has been convicted by a US court of defrauding his online followers in a billion-dollar scam.<\/p>\n
He was found guilty on nine of the 12 criminal counts he faced, including racketeering, fraud and money laundering.<\/p>\n
Guo’s sentencing has been scheduled for 19 November, when he could face decades behind bars. He has been in prison since his arrest in March 2023.<\/p>\n
He is a critic of the Chinese Communist party and was an associate of Stephen Bannon, an ex-White House chief strategist under former president Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
Guo goes by several aliases, including Miles Guo, Miles Kwok and “Brother Seven”. He was named as Ho Wan Kwok when he was indicted in 2023.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors said Guo raised more than $1bn (\u00a3770bn) from online followers, who joined him in investment and cryptocurrency schemes between 2018 and 2023.<\/p>\n
The money he raised was used to fund Guo’s lavish lifestyle which included a 50,000 square foot mansion, a $1m Lamborghini and a $37m yacht, they said.<\/p>\n
“Thousands of Guo’s online followers were victimised so that Guo could live a life of excess,” the US Attorney in Manhattan, Damian Williams, said after the verdict.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Guo’s political activism and his links to high-profile, right-wing US politicians and activists earned him hundreds of thousands of online followers, most of them Chinese people living in Western countries.<\/p>\n
Guo’s lawyers tried unsuccessfully to sway the jury by saying their client was not driven by money.<\/p>\n
Instead, they portrayed him as a fervent opponent of China’s political system and his ostentatious lifestyle was a critique of the Chinese Communist Party.<\/p>\n
After his arrival in the US in 2017, Guo’s outspoken opposition to China’s rulers inspired several ventures with Bannon.<\/p>\n
They appeared frequently together in online videos, and in 2020 they launched a campaign called the New Federal State of China, with the goal of overthrowing the Chinese Communist Party.<\/p>\n
Later that year, Bannon was arrested over an unrelated fraud case while on Guo’s yacht in Connecticut. He was later pardoned by then-president Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
Bannon is currently serving a four-month sentence for contempt of Congress.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n