The former mayor of a small town in the Philippines was found guilty of human trafficking and sentenced to life in prison on Thursday, more than a year after an investigation into her ties to Chinese organized crime gangs gripped the country.
Alice Guo was convicted of violating Philippine anti-trafficking laws by the Pasig City Regional Trial Court, Deputy State Prosecutor Olivia Torrevillas of the Justice Department said to reporters on Thursday morning. Ms. Guo was elected mayor of Bamban in Tarlac province, about 50 miles north of Manila, in 2022.
Her case gripped the Philippines in 2024 after senators questioned her during a televised public hearing about a suspected gambling operation in Bamban. They accused her of working with Chinese criminal gangs that run online scams and human trafficking.
They also asked her whether she had run for public office without being a natural born citizen of the Philippines. Investigators found that her fingerprints matched those of a Chinese national named Guo Hua Ping, who was born in 1990. Ms. Guo was born in 1986, according to a birth certificate that was registered in the Philippines in 2005.
The authorities said that she had leased a 20-acre property in Bamban to Zun Yuan Technology, a gambling company, and helped it with securing local government permits to operate an online casino. The police found more than 800 foreign nationals running online scams when they raided the compound last year.
Ms. Guo’s conviction on Thursday was the Philippines’ first successful prosecution of organized trafficking, according to Ms. Torrevillas.
The United States, China and several other countries have recently taken steps to disrupt the billion-dollar scam center industry. Criminal groups have trafficked tens of thousands of people to Southeast Asia, forcing them to steal billions of dollars from victims around the world through internet fraud.
Ms. Guo and three other defendants were sentenced to life and each fined 2 million pesos, or about $33,800, Ms. Torrevillas said. The court also ordered Ms. Guo to forfeit her compound, which prosecutors said was used in human trafficking and scam operations, to the government.
A lawyer for Ms. Guo did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday. She was arrested near Jakarta in September last year and extradited to the Philippines.
Francesca Regalado is a Times reporter covering breaking news.
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