Yvette Wang Sentenced to 10 Years for $1 Billion Fraud Scheme Tied to Exiled Tycoon Miles Guo.
Yvette Wang, a Chinese national and former chief of staff to exiled business tycoon Miles Guo, has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for her pivotal role in orchestrating a massive fraudulent scheme that defrauded investors of $1 billion. The scheme, which spanned several years, saw Wang and her co-conspirators deceive thousands of investors who collectively poured approximately $1.4 billion into various fake ventures run by Guo.
These operations, which included the Rule of Law Foundation, a fake nonprofit claiming to fight the Chinese Communist Party, and Himalaya Exchange, a fraudulent cryptocurrency platform, were designed to attract large sums of money under the guise of legitimate business opportunities.
Wang, who served as Guo's chief of staff, was directly involved in managing these ventures and played a significant role in persuading investors to fund these fraudulent projects.
Over the course of the scheme, Wang and her associates misused the funds for personal indulgences, including luxury items and extravagant purchases such as a $4.4 million Bugatti sports car, a 50,000-square-foot mansion in New Jersey, nearly $1 million worth of Persian and Chinese rugs, and even a $53,000 fireplace log cradle holder. These excessive expenditures were reminiscent of a "Gatsby-like" lifestyle, illustrating the scale of deception and corruption at play.
In addition to her lavish purchases, Wang received an annual salary of $500,000 along with a $1.1 million condominium in Manhattan. Her extravagant lifestyle was funded by the money she misappropriated from unsuspecting investors. The U.S. Department of Justice reported that when Wang was arrested in March 2023, authorities discovered $130,000 in cash hidden in her residence.
Along with her prison sentence, Wang has been ordered to forfeit $1.4 billion and serve three years of supervised release upon completion of her sentence. Her former employer, Miles Guo, who gained notoriety as an outspoken critic of the Chinese Communist Party after fleeing China in 2015, was convicted in July and is currently awaiting sentencing. Guo, often referred to as a "dissident billionaire," used his online platform, which boasted nearly half a million YouTube followers, to attract investors to his operations, which were later exposed as fraudulent.
The indictment also detailed the involvement of Kin Ming Je, a co-conspirator who has been charged with similar crimes and faces up to 20 years in prison for obstruction of justice. Je's whereabouts remain unknown, as he has been unaccounted for since the summer.
Legal filings indicated that Guo, Wang, and Je employed over 500 accounts registered under 80 different entities to launder investor money, further complicating the international scope of this fraudulent operation.
