Feds arrest Chinese tycoon linked to Steve Bannon and charge him with $1 billion fraud scheme to fund his yacht, Ferrari, and $36,000 mattresses
Brendan McDermid/Reuters
- A Chinese tycoon was arrested and charged with defrauding his online followers out of over $1 billion.
- Feds say Guo Wengui, aka Miles Guo, used stolen money to buy a $3.5 million Ferrari and two $36,000 mattresses.
- Guo is an ally and business associate of former Trump adviser Steve Bannon.
Exiled Chinese tycoon Guo Wengui, an ally of Steve Bannon, has been arrested and charged with defrauding his online followers out of over $1 billion and using the money to fund his extravagant lifestyle.
Guo is facing 11 counts of various fraud and money laundering charges, the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York announced on Wednesday.
Along with his financier William Je, Guo has been charged with soliciting "investments in various entities and programs through false statements and representations to hundreds of thousands" of online followers. He allegedly asked his followers to invest in or give money to GTV, the Himalaya Farm Alliance, and the Himalaya Exchange.
Between September 2022 and this month, the US government has seized over $630 million from 21 different bank accounts that were allegedly from Wengui's fraud, according to the press release.
Guo's closeness with Steve Bannon, one of the key architects of Donald Trump's rise to the presidency, is well-documented. Bannon's own arrest over allegations of fraud and money laundering, in August 2020, happened on Guo's yacht. A New Yorker profile of Guo credits Bannon with stopping Guo's extradition to China, and quotes one of Bannon's colleagues from the Trump White House referring to Guo as Bannon's "new sugar daddy." Guo's companies would go on to reportedly fund pro-Trump rallies and pay an attorney seeking to overturn the result of the 2020 election.
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After leaving government, Bannon served on the board of the Guo-backed Rule of Law Society, a nonprofit ostensibly dedicated to exposing misdeeds by the Chinese Communist Party. Bannon reportedly stepped down from the board in 2020. The two men also collaborated on GTV Media Group, an online news platform. GTV carried Bannon's War Room podcast in Chinese and livestreams of the January 6 attack on the Capitol. There were also advertisements promoting some of the investment schemes for which Guo has now been indicted. GTV itself has been the subject of a federal investigation by the FBI and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Authorities now say Guo used the money he misappropriated from his online followers to buy things for himself and his close relatives, including a $3.5 million Ferrari, two $36,000 mattresses, and a 50,000 square foot mansion in New Jersey. He also allegedly used the money to finance a $37 million luxury yacht, according to the charges.