\n<\/p>\n
Guo became a critic of China’s Communist regime and cultivated a wide online following among the Chinese community in the US.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors said Guo raised more than $1bn (\u00a3760m) 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
Guo denied the allegations, saying the funds were used for his political activism.<\/p>\n
He had built ties with other China critics, including Steve Bannon, a former adviser to US President Donald Trump. <\/b><\/p>\n
Bannon and Guo often appeared in online videos and, in 2020, 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 on Guo’s yacht in Connecticut. Bannon was charged in an unrelated case with fraud in an alleged scheme to defraud people who funded a not-for-profit company to build a US-Mexico border wall.<\/p>\n
Bannon entered a guilty plea in a Manhattan court to a first degree scheme to defraud charge and received a sentence of conditional discharge for three years.<\/p>\n
He also faced federal charges over the wall campaign after he was indicted by a federal grand jury, but the prosecution came to a halt after Trump pardoned him in the final hours of his first White House term<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n