The fate of Guo Wengui, the exiled Chinese billionaire whose opposition to the Chinese Communist Party made him a darling of the American right, rests with a Manhattan jury after his fraud and money-laundering trial came to a close on Thursday.
Mr. Guo is accused of running a criminal enterprise that defrauded investors of more than $1 billion through various schemes — club memberships, cryptocurrencies, a sale of private shares in his media company — and using the money to lead a lavish lifestyle.
Federal prosecutors said the fraudulent proceeds helped pay for a mansion in New Jersey, a Lamborghini roadster and a $100 million investment in a hedge fund. During the five-week trial, they put forth a parade of witnesses, including former employees and investors, and presented bank records and invoices.
“This was a scheme, this was a con, this was a fraud,” Ryan Finkel, a prosecutor, said in his three-hour closing argument on Wednesday. Mr. Guo, he said, “lied to take other people’s money.”
Lawyers for Mr. Guo, who did not take the stand, argued that his businesses were legitimate and that the money he had collected was deployed in a crusade to end Communist rule in China. His various efforts included running a Chinese-language streaming site and a Twitter-like social media platform, both of which were popular with fellow exiles opposed to Beijing.
“The government wants you to believe that there was an enterprise here,” Sidhardha Kamaraju, one of Mr. Guo’s lawyers, said in closing remarks. “You know what, they’re right, but it’s not a racketeering enterprise. It’s a political one.”
Mr. Kamaraju argued that it made no sense for Mr. Guo to steal from his followers, as it would undermine the movement and play into the hands of the Chinese Communist Party, which launched a well-documented but unsuccessful campaign in 2017 to repatriate him.
If convicted, Mr. Guo could face decades in prison or the remote possibility of extradition to China, where he has been accused of a host of crimes, including money laundering and rape.
Any move to send him back to China could be met with fierce political resistance in the United States because of his close relationship with Stephen K. Bannon, a longtime adviser to former President Donald J. Trump, and other prominent right-wing figures allied with them. Mr. Guo was once a member of Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s club in Palm Beach, Fla.
Throughout the trial, prosecutors worked to associate him with Mr. Bannon, who was named a co-conspirator by the government but was not indicted. Mr. Bannon had a $1 million consulting contract with one of Mr. Guo’s companies and had a hand in creating three organizations that are central to the government’s case. On multiple occasions, his picture was shown on screens placed in front of the jurors.
“And it’s not some accident, by the way, that Steve Bannon was involved at all,” Mr. Finkel told the jurors on Wednesday. Mr. Guo, he said, “used Steve Bannon. He was hired for a million dollars so that Guo could use Bannon’s notoriety and his fame to promote himself.”
Mr. Bannon, who recently began serving a prison term for contempt of Congress, declined to speak on the record about the trial.
On June 4, 2020, he appeared alongside Mr. Guo on a boat in New York Harbor to announce the formation of the New Federal State of China, which aimed to supplant the Communist government. Peter Navarro, another former Trump official who is also now in prison for contempt of Congress, was named the new state’s “international ambassador.”
In August 2020, Mr. Bannon was arrested on Mr. Guo’s yacht on unrelated federal charges of defrauding donors to a private fund-raising effort called We Build the Wall. He was pardoned by Mr. Trump in the final hours of his presidency, but still faces similar state charges in New York.
Mr. Guo, who is also known as Miles Kwok and whose age has been variously described as 54 to 57, fled to the United States after his patron in China, a former vice minister of state security, was detained. For two years he kept a low profile, living in a luxury Manhattan penthouse apartment overlooking Central Park. But in early 2017 he began to rail against a coterie of senior Chinese officials, accusing them of corruption.
With hourslong tirades, first on YouTube and then on his own streaming site, Mr. Guo attracted tens of thousands of ardent followers from both the Chinese-speaking diaspora and within China. They were drawn to the charismatic, wealthy former Beijing insider who spoke of ending the Communist Party’s seven-decade hold on power.
As Chinese officials began to seize Mr. Guo’s properties and bank accounts in China and Hong Kong, Mr. Guo turned to those supporters to fund his opulent lifestyle, according to witnesses at the trial.
“I was really a believer in this movement,” said Le Zhou, a Florida real estate agent who sank tens of thousands of dollars into Mr. Guo’s investment offerings with assurances that Mr. Guo would absorb any losses.
Patrick Chin, another government witness and former Guo supporter, suggested Mr. Guo had run “a very elaborate scam.”
Several of the witnesses called by Mr. Guo’s defense team faced withering cross-examinations from prosecutors. At one point, the judge, Analisa Torres, cautioned a former security contractor for Mr. Guo that he was in danger of incriminating himself with his testimony.
Mr. Guo was arrested at his New York penthouse in March 2023. But despite the dozen charges against him, he has retained fervent supporters around the world. Many showed up each day to watch the trial in Lower Manhattan, packing the public gallery and occasionally acting like a Greek chorus, gasping or muttering as the courtroom drama unfolded. The website for the New Federal State of China posted daily transcripts of the proceedings in English and Chinese.
In May, shortly before the trial got underway, Yvette Wang, Mr. Guo’s chief of staff, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit both wire fraud and money laundering. Set to be sentenced in September, she was not a witness in Mr. Guo’s trial.
On Wednesday and Thursday, Judge Torres gave lengthy instructions to the jury of seven men and five women.
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