Exiled Chinese businessman Guo convicted at US fraud trial

By Luc Cohen

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Guo Wengui, an exiled Chinese businessman and outspoken opponent of Beijing's communist government, was convicted on Tuesday in his U.S. trial on charges of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from online followers.

Guo was convicted on nine of the 12 criminal counts he faced, including racketeering conspiracy and wire fraud, in a trial that lasted seven weeks.

He could face decades in prison. U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres set his sentencing for Nov. 19.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan said Guo raised more than $1 billion by guaranteeing followers on social media that they would not lose money if they joined him in a series of investment and cryptocurrency schemes from 2018 to 2023, some of which he said would go toward challenging China's government.

Prosecutors say the onetime real estate mogul spent the money on luxury goods including a New Jersey mansion, a red Lamborghini and a yacht.

"Thousands of Guo's online followers were victimized so that Guo could live a life of excess," Damian Williams, the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, said in a statement after the verdict.

Guo's defense lawyers portrayed him as an ardent dissident who flaunted his wealth as part of his political critique of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and said that jurors should not rush to judgment as prosecutors had.

"Mr. Guo didn't care about the money," defense lawyer Sidhardha Kamaraju said in his closing argument last week. "He cared about the movement."

After Kamaraju spoke, prosecutor Juliana Murray told jurors that the defense lawyer was correct that Guo cared about the anti-CCP movement.

"And at least one of the reasons he loved it is because it was his personal piggybank," Murray said.

During his closing argument last week, prosecutor Ryan Finkel played videos of Guo pitching investments, including several in which Guo wore sunglasses and stood on a yacht deck.

Earlier in the trial, jurors were allowed to hold keys to the Lamborghini that authorities found in a garage on Guo's Connecticut estate.

Kamaraju argued that the New Jersey mansion and Lamborghini were not Guo's personal property, but rather amenities available for the use of a luxury membership club for his followers.

Guo has been jailed since his March 2023 arrest.

Finkel also showed jurors a video of Steve Bannon, a onetime adviser to former U.S. President Donald Trump, promoting one of Guo's ventures at a press conference in 2018.

Bannon was arrested in August 2020 on Guo's yacht, the Lady May, in an unrelated fraud case and was later pardoned by Trump.

(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Matthew Lewis)