For years, a Chinese fugitive billionaire, Guo Wengui, known by various names Ho Wan Kwok, Guo Miles, Miles Kwok, “Brother Seven”, lived the life of an anti-CCP dissident and a hero among Western media. Guo Wengui built a large following in the West based on his ‘CCP is hounding me’ claims until he was convicted in a US federal court for over $1 billion in fraud against his own supporters. Guo Wengui was awarded a 30-year prison sentence by a federal court on 29th June 2026.
Fraud allegation and Guo Wengui’s escape from China
Guo Wengui rose as a real estate developer in China. He reportedly ranked 74th on the 2014 Hurun China Rich List, having assets estimated around USD 2.6 billion. Wengui fled China amidst the CCP’s sweeping anti-corruption campaign.
Wengui’s associates, including former intelligence official Ma Jian, were also targeted. Guo Wengui aka Guo Miles, portrayed the action against him by the Chinese authorities as political persecution for exposing high-level CCP corruption.
In the initial years following Guo’s escape, the Chinese authorities declared him a fugitive, and even issued Interpol notices. The Chinese authorities accused him of serious offences, including bribery, money laundering, rape of a former assistant, kidnapping, and other crimes.
Wengui’s assets were frozen in various places, including Hong Kong. China had also requested the fraudster’s deportation from the US.
A fraud in China, a CCP-dissident in the West: How Guo Wengui created his ‘activist’ persona with the help of a pliable media
During his self-imposed exile, Guo Wengui reinvented himself as a vocal critic of the Chinese Communist Party. Wengui gave interviews to Western legacy media outlets, including a US government-funded Voice of America (VoA), BBC, New York Times, Financial Times, and Forbes, among others. He also appeared on various audio podcasts.
Together with American media executive, investment banker and former White House strategist, Steve Bannon, Guo Wengui founded a media company named GTV.
In 2018, Steve Bannon and Guo Wengui founded a nonprofit organisation, which was ironically named Rule of Law Society, to oppose the CCP. The nonprofit was originally backed by a commitment of $100 million from Guo Wengui.
However, as the nonprofit’s financials came under scrutiny, amidst refusal to disclose documents, Steve Bannon left the board of the Rule of Law Society in 2021.
The duo had in 2020 launched the “New Federal State of China”. The declaration was made on a yacht, and Guo announced that he would overthrow the CCP. Guo’s media ventures faced criticism for what was reported to be misinformation regarding origins of Covid, and general narratives around US politics.
Through his ‘activism’ and media appearances targeting the CCP, Guo Wengui built a devoted supporter base among Chinese diaspora and anti-CCP activists. Wengui framed his fake activism as a ‘crusade for democracy and against the CCP’s tyranny in China.
In January 2025, Guo’s associate, Yvette Wang, was sentenced to 10 Years in prison for her role in the $1 billion fraud.
Amid tensions in US and China relations, the Western media and public figures amplified Guo Wengui as a heroic dissident, after what could be better than having a Chinese billionaire with a ‘persecuted by CCP’ backstory, to bolster America’s narrative against the Chinese Communist Party. Guo’s rise in the US has been attributed to a receptive environment for anti-CCP voices; apparently, for this reason, he could evade scrutiny of his background earlier.
Given the CCP’s reputation for stifling dissenting voices, no matter how prominent, Wengui’s story came across as believable in the West.
Guo Wengui aka Miles Guo defrauded thousands of his online followers through various means: What the US authorities revealed
Guo Wengui was arrested in March 2023 by the US Department of Justice on charges of orchestrating a massive conspiracy to defraud thousands of his online followers out of $1 billion. The fraud was carried out via schemes involving GTV private placements, loans, G|CLUBS memberships, Himalaya Farm, and cryptocurrency, the Himalaya Coin/Exchange.
The prosecutors alleged that Guo Wengui, aka Miles Guo, promised outsized returns linked to his anti-CCP ‘movement’. He then misappropriated hundreds of millions of this money for personal luxury. He bought a 50,000 sq ft mansion, a Ferrari, a Bugatti sports car worth $4.4 million, a $37 million yacht, expensive mattresses, etc.
Guo, along with his London-based business partner, Kim Ming Je, bought hedge fund investments, $1 million worth of rugs and a $140,000 piano, among other extravagant purchases.
The US authorities described this as “affinity fraud” as Guo exploited the trust of his followers in his anti-CCP persona.
The investigation into Guo’s activities revealed that he laundered hundreds of millions of stolen funds to conceal the conspiracy’s illegal activities and continue the fraud’s operations.
In 2021, Miles Guo aka Han Wo Kwok settled with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) an illegal fundraising case for $539 million.
In July 2024, Guo was convicted on 9 of 12 counts, including racketeering conspiracy, wire fraud, securities fraud, money laundering, etc.
Finally, on 29th June 2026, Guo Wengui, aka Han Wo Kwok, was sentenced to 30 years in prison and ordered to forfeit $889 million. While pronouncing the verdict, the federal judge said that Guo Wengui preyed on people seeking democracy in China.
During the course of the trial, Guo Wengui continued to cry victim, and his remaining supporters claim that the US charges against him are CCP-influenced persecution to silence him. The prosecutors, however, rejected Guo’s claims, stating that the evidence presented by them centred on fiscal misconduct against his followers, and not fabricated political charges.
Guo Wengui fled legal heat in China for his alleged fraud there, came to the US, concocted a hero narrative around himself with the help of Western media, cried persecution, monetised his ‘heroic’ story, gained attention and followers, and then used that platform and trust of his followers for a large-scale fraud.
It is interesting to recall how Guo Wengui had in August 2019, predicted that Alibaba founder Jack Ma would either be jailed or end up dead, saying that the Chinese government wanted to “take back” Ma’s ANT Group.
The case of Guo Wengui building a fake persecution story, building a following by attacking a regime or political ideology despised abroad, defrauding people, and when accountability knocks on the door, crying ‘politically motivated persecution ’ by a fascist or authoritarian regime, reminds one of Rana Ayyub, the Washington Post columnist and notorious Hinduphobe.
Rana Ayyub: India’s Guo Wengui?
Rana Ayyub earned widespread attention for her 2016 self-published book Gujarat Files: Anatomy of a Cover-Up, based on what she claimed to be her 2010 undercover recordings of Gujarat officials ‘admitting’ to cover-ups and encounter killings after the 2002 Godhra riots. Ayyub’s then employer, Tehelka, had declined to publish her story, citing incompleteness and other editorial issues. Although journalist Madhu Tehran had revealed that she had offered to publish the tapes on Tehelka, Rana Ayyub had refused.
The Islamist journalist built a ‘fearless voice against tyranny of Hindutva supremacists’ persona around her ridiculous and utterly biased piece of journalism around the 2002 riots.
Rana Ayyub, who has a long-standing agenda against Narendra Modi, was humiliated by the Supreme Court when it consigned her “investigative” book on the Gujarat riots into the dustbin.
One of the innuendos in Ayyub’s book was that then Gujarat CM Narendra Modi had planned ex-Gujarat Home Minister Haren Pandya’s murder, who was shot dead on March 26, 2003, in Ahmedabad during a morning walk.
A trial court found 12 Muslim men guilty of Haren Pandya’s murder, including the main accused Asghar Ali. According to the CBI investigation, the murder was carried out on the orders of a Muslim cleric named Mufti Sufiyan to avenge the Gujarat riots.
The men were cleared of murder charges by the Gujarat High Court, citing a “botched investigation” by the CBI, but they were nonetheless charged with criminal conspiracy and attempted murder.
CBI had challenged the High Court ruling in the Supreme Court, which eventually upheld the original trial court verdict.
Puncturing Ayyub’s Muslim victimhood bogey, the Supreme Court refused to consider the book ‘Gujarat Files’ authored by Rana Ayyub in the proceedings. The court had thrashed the book, saying that it was based upon surmises, conjectures, and suppositions.
In fact, the claims made by Rana Ayyub in her book are so questionable that even the extreme leftist publications had also refused to publish it, and eventually Ayyub had published it herself. The book was based on a sting operation Rana Ayyub had supposedly conducted, but she never published the videos.
Rana Ayyub has, since her claim to fame, continuously indulged in anti-Hindu propaganda through her articles in foreign leftist media outlets and online commentary. From anti-CAA Shaheen Bagh protests, 2020 anti-Hindu Delhi Riots, peddling Covid pandemic-related anti-government propaganda, inserting Muslim victimhood in every issue, peddling ‘Indian Army torturing Kashmiri boys’ lies, blaming RSS and ‘Hindu terrorists’ for the 2015 Ranaghat nun rape, to her online Hinduphobic commentary for which she even faced FIRs, Rana Ayyub’s ‘journalism’ has been agenda-driven, Islamist-aimed at opposing and vilifying the BJP and RSS.
Her propaganda has earned her a positive reputation among ideologically aligned Islamo-leftist circles. What makes Rana Ayyub similar to Guo Wengui is the alleged Covid fundraising scam that Ayyub is accused of orchestrating.
When India was grappling with the Covid pandemic, Rana Ayyub had amassed a whopping ₹2,69,50,695 through 3 crowdfunding campaigns on the platform ‘Ketto’.
Of the ₹2.69 crores received, about ₹80,49,856 was received in foreign currency in violation of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) of 2010.
Interestingly, Rana Ayyub collected funds meant for COVID-19 relief work in the bank accounts of her father, Mohammed Ayyub Shaikh and sister Iffat Shaikh to the tune of ₹1.60 crores and ₹37.15 lakhs.
Rana Ayyub had transferred ₹84.40 lakhs from her father’s account and ₹36.40 lakhs from her sister’s account to her personal bank account. Overall, around ₹1,20,80,000 were transferred to the account of Rana Ayyub.
Interestingly, she had downplayed the embezzlement of such a large sum of money in April 2022 as a ‘small amount of $20000.’ This is even though the amount in question is ₹2.69 crores (~$3,14,500).
In its July 2025 order, the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT) noted that about ₹2.4 crores of the crowdfunded amount remained unutilised despite a year of the campaign.
“The account in which the money was withdrawn by the assessee or her family members was a personal savings account. Moreover, instead of carrying out any relief work, the assessee opened a new current account and made an investment of a fixed deposit in her name and also incurred personal expenditure from the same savings account in which the funds were received,” it stated.
Ayyub had claimed before the Income Tax Department that a ‘small part (₹28 lakhs)’ of ₹2.69 crores was used for sending migrant workers home and purchasing ration, hospitalisation, procuring transportation and purchasing tarpaulin sheets for those affected in West Bengal floods.
She spent ₹19 lakhs to cover her ‘personal expenses’. It also came to light that the controversial ‘journalist’ made a personal fixed deposit of ₹50 lakhs from the funds received for COVID-19 relief work.
The Income Tax Department questioned why, if Ayyub had no malicious intentions, why did she purchased fixed deposit receipts of Rs.50,00,000/- in her personal name.
The investigation revealed that only ₹18 lakhs were used for relief work out of ₹1.23 crores that Rana Ayyub received through the first campaign on Ketto. In her defence, Ayyub had claimed that the unutilised funds were ‘reserved for building a hospital’.
The Income Tax Appellate Tribunal also found that Rana Ayyub violated the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) of 2010, since the Washington Post ‘journalist’ does not qualify for foreign donations under Section 3(1)(h) of the FCRA.
Ayyub collected funds from supporters, slum dwellers and farmers, for charitable activities in the name of Covid relief; however, the end use of these funds for charitable activities remains unproven. The controversial ‘journalist’ collected and parked donations in the bank accounts of her relatives and did not maintain separate accounts for the supposed charitable works.
Earlier, in February 2022, the Enforcement Directorate attached ₹1.77 crore of Ayyub’s assets. She obviously denies the allegations brought against her and described it as a case of politically motivated harassment to stifle her dissenting voice.
While Rana Ayyub’s Islamist activism under the pretext of ‘journalism’, and alleged fundraising fraud, made even the worst among the leftist propaganda outlets distance themselves from her, she found supporters and employers in foreign Islamo-leftist media and political circles, who are ideologically opposed to the so-called ‘Hindu nationalist’ Modi government.
Ayyub has bagged several ‘press freedom awards have received support from Islamist-sympathising outfits like Reporters Sans Frontières, Citizens for Justice and Peace, Amnesty, and UN rapporteurs.
Much like Guo Wengui, Rana Ayyub was also hailed as a ‘fearless dissident’ standing up to authoritarian governments in the West. She too cried, ‘I am being persecuted by the regime for speaking truth’. However, sooner or later, the real truth comes out.
