Exiled Chinese businessman Guo Wengui, a pal of former Trump White House advisor Steve Bannon, was arrested in New York for orchestrating a more than $1 billion fraud conspiracy.
If Wengui ends up in prison, he will no longer have access to his 50,000-square-foot New Jersey mansion, $3.5 million Ferrari, Chinese and Persian rugs worth nearly $1 million, and a $4.4 million Bugatti. That’s what Mr. Fancy Pants spent the cash on. And the feds are seizing all of those luxury items.
Via The Daily Beast:
Federal prosecutors unsealed a 12-count indictment against Guo, who is also known as “Miles Kwok,” “Brother Seven,” and “The Principal,” charging the mysterious moneyman with a raft of wire fraud, securities fraud, bank fraud, and money laundering counts.
Guo, 52, and co-conspirator Jin Ming Je, 56, misappropriated some $1 billion in “fraudulently obtained funds during the course of their conspiracy,” according to the Department of Justice. Guo allegedly used the money, for, among other things, a 50,000-square-foot New Jersey mansion, upkeep on a $37 million yacht, a $3.5 million Ferrari, Chinese and Persian rugs worth nearly $1 million, a $4.4 million Bugatti sports car, a Lamborghini Aventador SVJ Roadster, a Rolls-Royce Phantom EWB, a $62,000 television, a $53,000 fireplace log cradle holder, and two $36,000 mattresses that are apparently made of horse hair.
Mr. Greedy Guts’s fancy lifestyle is over.
The details of Guo’s luxe life span five pages of the indictment against him. The government is looking to seize several bank accounts with a total value worth more than $600,000, as well as various other items Guo allegedly purchased with illegally obtained funds. The list includes a Louis XV-style ormolu-mounted mahogany commode furniture, a $180,000 pewter-and-bronze extension table, and a watch storage box for nearly $60,000. Then there’s the Porsche-designed Bösendorfer piano made in Austria that’s among the best sounding instruments in the world—and a custom piano bench worth more than $140,000.
The feds are moving to seize a one-of-a-kind, stainless steel table in the shape of a flower that the celebrated Italian designer Gabriella Crespi made for Milan’s Museo della Scienza e della Tecnica in 1982. The chic New York City furniture shop that sold it called it “the most important table Crespi designed” before she died in 2017.
The U.S. government is also planning to take control of Guo’s sleek and modern yacht, the Lady May, whose onboard tracker currently indicates is moored at Steelpointe Harbor in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
Bannon has his own legal issues to worry about after being charged last year with money laundering, conspiracy, and a scheme to defraud, for his alleged role in the ‘We Build The Wall’ scheme that raised millions of dollars to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border privately. Of course, that never came to fruition.
