MANILA – In a significant legal development, a Philippine court has handed down a life sentence to a former mayor, identified by officials as a Chinese national, for her involvement in human trafficking. This conviction is tied to her role in establishing an illicit online gaming operation in a northern province, where numerous Chinese and other international workers were coerced into executing fraudulent activities.

The court in Pasig City, part of metropolitan Manila, found Alice Guo guilty alongside seven other individuals, both Filipino and Chinese. Each defendant has been ordered to serve life in prison, pay a hefty fine of 2 million pesos (approximately $34,000), and provide compensation to several victims of trafficking. These victims were the ones who bravely brought the charges forward.

Despite the conviction, Guo has consistently denied all charges, asserting her identity as a Filipino citizen.

In recent years, Southeast Asia has become a hotspot for expansive online scam operations, particularly in regions bordering Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar. According to United Nations estimates, these operations have ensnared hundreds of thousands in what can only be described as virtual slavery. Victims are compelled to deceive global victims through fake romantic entanglements, phony investment opportunities, and unlawful gambling activities.

Within the Philippines, these fraudulent enterprises have rapidly established themselves, occupying sprawling complexes or high-end office spaces in Manila’s business districts. Their operations have been aided by corrupt practices, including the bribing of local officials to facilitate the movement of a large workforce.

Philippine authorities contend that Alice Guo is actually Guo Huaping, a Chinese national who allegedly assumed a false Filipino identity to vie for the mayoral seat in Bamban, a town in Tarlac province. It was here that she allegedly orchestrated a large-scale scam operation, strategically positioned near the municipal hall.

“They used the parcels of land and buildings to house the trafficked workers and to force them to work as scammers,” the court said in its decision.

Last year, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. ordered a ban on hundreds of mostly Chinese-run online gaming operations, which proliferated under the administration of previous President Rodrigo Duterte. Marcos accused the gaming operations of crimes including financial scams, human trafficking, torture, kidnapping and murder.

Many have been raided and shut down since then, with tens of thousands of trafficked workers rescued and sent back to their home countries. But more scam centers remain in operation, officials said.

“The conviction of Alice Guo, also known as Guo Hua Ping, is a victory against corruption, human trafficking, cybercrime and many other transnational crimes,” said Sen. Risa Hontiveros. “But it is far from over.”

Hontiveros led televised Senate inquiries last year that exposed underground online scam operations in the Philippines, along with Guo’s alleged criminal involvement.

Philippine security officials and Hontiveros have said the scam centers operated by Guo and other Chinese nationals may have also been used for espionage by China, which has had increasingly fierce territorial conflicts with the Philippines in the South China Sea and has strongly opposed the presence of American forces in the country. The Philippines is the oldest U.S. treaty ally in Asia.

“We will continue to demand accountability from every government agency that failed in their duties, and we will continue to investigate the full extent of Chinese intelligence operations in our country,” Hontiveros said. “And to all others who enabled Alice Guo’s criminal empire: the Philippines is not a playground for exploitation, infiltration and espionage.”

Guo has not been charged with espionage and she denies any connection to spying.

The town of Bamban is located several kilometers (miles) from a Philippine air force base, where American forces have been allowed to maintain a rotating presence with their aircraft and weapons under a 2014 defense pact.

Guo was dismissed from her post as mayor last year by a state Ombudsman, who cited grave misconduct. She fled the Philippines in July 2024, but was tracked down in Indonesia, where she was arrested and deported to the Philippines. She has been in detention since last year.