Who is the real Alice Guo? Fugitive mayor accused of spying for China faces legal reckoning after weeks on the run

(CNN) — For months, millions of people were glued to their TV screens as a slight, bespectacled young woman was grilled by lawmakers in the Philippines for hours at a time about her origin story

What is her real name? Age? Who are her parents? Where did she grow up? The official inquiry into Alice Guo, disgraced former mayor of a small town not far from the capital Manila, has been compulsive viewing for Filipinos since it began in May.

At stake was whether Guo, 34, had spent years in the Philippines as a sleeper agent for China, an incendiary accusation in a country that has seen tension with its giant neighbor soar along with multiple confrontations in the South China Sea.

In July, Guo left the country and went on the run across Southeast Asia. This week, the authorities finally caught up with her. On Friday, the former mayor was extradited from Indonesia to the Philippines.

In a press conference shortly after her return, she told reporters: “I have received death threats, and I asked for help (from authorities). And I was happy when I saw them. I felt safe.”

Her sanguine attitude was in sharp contrast with that of Philippine officials, including President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, who warned lawbreakers that “the arm of the law is long, and it will reach you” shortly after Guo’s arrest abroad.

Upon arriving in Manila, Guo was immediately hit by charges from immigration authorities accusing her of “undesirability and misrepresentation,” for allegedly acquiring Philippine citizenship through fraud.

Guo also faces a slew of money laundering charges – as well as possible future charges for illegal gambling and human trafficking – all of which allegedly took place in Bamban, a small town in Tarlac province about 60 miles north of Manila, where she had served as mayor for about two years before absconding.

Guo’s legal team described her arrest as a “welcome development” as she would now be able to “answer the allegations and issues thrown against her.”

“We trust that Alice L. Guo will demonstrate her courage and resilience in the face of adversity,” the David Buenaventura and Ang Law Office said in a statement to CNN on Thursday.

But who exactly is Alice Guo? And how did she come to embody the Philippines’ growing nervousness about China?

Fall from grace

With long black hair and a beaming smile, the young candidate running for mayor of Bamban in 2022 welcomed voters into her life. She appeared in campaign promotional material posted to YouTube with the description: “Get to know the real Alice Guo.”

Dressed in a pink polo shirt and jeans, she’s seen waving to supporters also dressed in pink, her signature color. Her provincial life seemed ordinary. On her YouTube videos, she’s seen tending her chickens and having deep-fried dried fish for breakfast, like a typical Filipino.

The campaign worked, and Guo was elected.

But her reputation as an enthusiastic young public servant was called into question earlier this year when the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission (PAOCC) received separate tip-offs from two workers from Malaysia and Vietnam.

They had asked for help to get back to their home countries after claiming to have been held against their will in a building in Bamban, a town home to just 78,000 people.

The building was suspected to be a Philippine Offshore Gaming Operation (POGO), which caters to punters based in China, where gambling is illegal. POGOs were popular places of employment for tens of thousands of foreign workers and lucrative, but were often linked with organized crime.

When authorities raided the Bamban complex in March, they found more than 800 Filipinos, Chinese, Vietnamese and other nationals, who claimed to have been working there against their will.

The government-run Philippine News Agency reported police found “love scam” scripts, firearms and mobile phones allegedly used for scam transactions.

The rescued workers were allegedly made to pose as lovers to lure people to send money, in what’s commonly known as “pig-butchering” – a type of confidence fraud in which victims are lured by scammers often impersonating young women on the internet.

To get to the bottom of what was happening in Bamban, the Philippine senate ordered an inquiry into Guo on May 7 headed by Senator Risa Hontiveros.

Guo failed to show up for at least three of the hearings, citing death threats and poor mental health, according to a statement on Facebook before her official account was taken down.

While she was absent from the hearings, raids on casino hubs continued and public criticism intensified over POGOs, which have spread across the country.

Subsequent probes into the complex in Bamban also uncovered alleged links between the mayor and the shady underworld of gambling centers, with some suspected of being vehicles to launder money.

President Marcos Jr expressed his growing concern about the explosion of offshore casinos in an address to the nation on July 22. To a standing ovation from lawmakers, he ordered a total ban with immediate effect.

“Disguising as legitimate entities, their operations have ventured into illicit areas furthest from gaming, such as financial scamming, money laundering, prostitution, human trafficking, kidnapping, brutal torture — even murder,” Marcos said. “The grave abuse and disrespect to our system of laws must stop.”

Suspected ties with China

Against this heightened scrutiny, the senate inquiry into Guo’s possible links to Chinese criminals transfixed the country.

Many parts of her life story did not add up, lawmakers said during the publicly broadcast sessions that lasted for hours, filled with the dizzying back-and-forth of questions aimed at Guo and her suspected accomplices.

During her testimony, Guo claimed she grew up on a livestock farm in the town of Bamban, and was the lovechild of a Filipino maid and a Chinese man.

Guo speaks Tagalog fluently, but she does not speak the regional language, Kapampangan, which is typically spoken in the town. She said she was homeschooled by a woman called “Teacher Rubilyn” and claimed she did not have any childhood friends who could vouch for her.

Suspicion that she was working as an “asset” for Beijing grew among lawmakers, as they cited her evasive answers to questions about her Chinese parentage. Her alleged business ventures with foreigners who have criminal records also raised doubts.

Speculation intensified when the senate probe revealed that her real name was “Guo Hua Ping” based on immigration records from 2005. Later, the National Bureau of Investigation found that her fingerprints matched those of a Chinese national of the same name.

Even though tension with China is rising, it hasn’t been a feature of daily life for the large ethnic Chinese population in the Philippines. Generations of Chinese migrants have intermarried with local natives and Spaniards over centuries, with millions of Filipinos today having some degree of Chinese lineage.

The real concern about Guo arose from her alleged ties with business associates from China currently in prison.

The Philippine senate investigation presented documents showing Guo had incorporated Baofu Land Development in 2019 with business partners Zhang Ruijin and Lin Baoying. It was registered to the same sprawling complex in Bamban where the workers were rescued by authorities.

Zhang and Lin are both serving prison time in Singapore for fraudulently using forged documents to launder millions of dollars.

Armed with mounting evidence, Philippine law enforcement agencies, including the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC), jointly filed multiple charges of money laundering against Guo and 35 others for allegedly laundering over 100 million Philippine pesos ($1.8 million) in proceeds from criminal activities.

The AMLC also filed to forfeit assets valued at more than 6 billion Philippine pesos ($106 million) from Guo and her associates.

Among those charged were Guo, her alleged sister Shiela, and a business partner named Cassandra Li Ong. They allegedly ran scam-farm operations under a number of companies: QSeed Genetics; Zun Yuan Technology Inc; Hongshen Gaming Technology Inc; QJJ Farms; and Baofu Land Development Inc.

But by the time the charges were filed on August 30, Guo was already on the run.

President Marcos Jr said Guo would be entitled to standard legal rights but stressed the country would waste no time seeking justice and tracking down those who had helped her flee.

“We will not allow this to prolong the resolution of the case whose outcome will be a victory for the Filipino people,” he said.

This story has been updated.

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