Miles Guo, the exiled Chinese businessman who built a following as a critic of Beijing, was sentenced to 30 years in prison for a fraud scheme that raised more than $1 billion from investors. Part of that scheme ran through a fake cryptocurrency called Himalaya Coin.
US District Judge Analisa Torres handed down the sentence Monday in the Southern District of New York, according to a press release from the SDNY US Attorney's Office. Guo, also known as Ho Wan Kwok and Guo Wengui, was ordered to forfeit $889 million, and the DOJ said he and his family spent victims' stolen funds on a $26.5 million New Jersey mansion and a Lamborghini, among other luxury items. A federal jury convicted him in July 2024 on racketeering conspiracy, wire fraud conspiracy, securities fraud and money laundering charges after a seven-week trial.
Guo launched what he called the Himalaya Exchange in a 2021 broadcast on his media platform GTV, pitching it as a cryptocurrency ecosystem where users could trade "H Coin" and "H Dollar." Prosecutors said in the SDNY release that the tokens were "little more than made-up figures on an internal company spreadsheet," not blockchain-native assets as advertised.
The crypto pitch was one piece of a wider operation that also drew money through GTV stock offerings, a members club called G|CLUBS and a nonprofit called the Rule of Law Foundation, prosecutors said. Guo, 55, fled China for the US in 2017 and built a following among Chinese dissidents. He also cultivated ties with prominent right-wing figures in U.S. politics, including former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, Time reported. Bannon has not been charged in this case.
