Citation:
On August 20, the Philippine Bureau of Immigration confirmed that Alice Guo is currently in Indonesia, arriving there nearly a month after leaving the Philippines. According to reports, on August 19, Philippine Senator Risa Hontiveros stated in a Senate meeting that she received news that Alice Guo had left the Philippines for Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on July 17, 2024.
Meanwhile, Alice Guo's lawyer stated that she is still within the Philippines and will appear when appropriate.
Recently, "Where is Alice Guo" has become a hot topic in the Chinese community. Today, PASA takes a closer look at who Alice Guo really is and her intricate connections with the POGO industry.
Raid on a Black Industry Park by Philippine Officials
On February 25, 2024, in a park named Baofu in the small town of Bamban, Philippines, a Vietnamese man named Danny took the opportunity to escape. He jumped out of an apartment window, climbed over the west side wall, and hid between the mud, woods, and riverbed from eight security guards chasing him.
He didn't get far and had to hide in a nearby farm. The security guards threatened the farm owner to hand over Danny, but the owner, a retired U.S. Air Force veteran, protected Danny and reported to the local police.
A building called "Meditation Pavilion" inside the Baofu park. (Hearing materials)
The police did come, but they asked Danny to sign a statement renouncing any charges against Zunyuan Technology Company inside the Baofu park: he was not harmed, and he left voluntarily. After complying, Danny quickly received a budget airline ticket, and Zunyuan Technology threatened him to leave the Philippines within three days.
Zunyuan Technology is a Philippine Offshore Gaming Operator (POGO).
Over the 20 years of its booming development, POGO has brought significant revenue to the Philippine government, but as the industry grew, it has brought numerous crimes to the Philippines and its neighboring countries, such as murder, human trafficking, kidnapping for ransom, severe illegal detention, abuse, drug trafficking, and more.
Danny's escape may have encouraged others trapped in similar situations. A few days later, a Malaysian named Dylan used a POGO company's phone to contact the Malaysian Embassy in the Philippines, including a photo of his bruised face. The Malaysian Embassy, citing illegal detention of its citizen, sought help from PAOCC.
PAOCC applied for a search warrant and raided the Baofu park on March 13.
Baofu park, adjacent to the Bamban City Hall, is the largest and most modern building complex in the area. According to PAOCC reports, it consists of three villas connected by underground tunnels, and under one villa worth 40 million pesos (about 5 million RMB), there is a wine cellar worth millions of pesos.
According to Dylan's testimony, he was there to celebrate the Spring Festival at Baofu, invited by a friend. However, his friend left him alone, and then a man who seemed to be a manager took his phone, saying he owed the POGO company 300,000 pesos (about 37,000 RMB) and must work for POGO for six months without pay. "I was trafficked, and 300,000 pesos was the price," he thought.
On the day of the PAOCC raid, there were a total of 678 staff members in the Baofu park, including 383 Filipinos, 218 Chinese, 55 Vietnamese, 16 Malaysians, 2 Rwandans, 2 Indonesians, and 1 Kyrgyzstani.
PAOCC found several safes in the park, collecting boxes of documents, which directed the investigation towards cryptocurrency scams, pig butchering scams, illegal detention, and tax evasion.
Soon, the Chinese Embassy in the Philippines notified PAOCC that Zunyuan company had six Chinese fugitives. Among them, a big boss named Huang Zhiyang had been wanted by the Philippines at China's request since 2021.
PAOCC also made some additional discoveries: many of the utility and maintenance fees in the Baofu park were paid by Alice Guo, who also represented POGO at some meetings and signed documents.
And Alice Guo is indeed the mayor of Bamban. In 2022, Alice Guo ran as an independent candidate for mayor of Bamban and became the first female mayor of the locality by a margin of less than 500 votes.
The Mystery of Mayor Guo's Background
Before running for mayor, Alice Guo was a businesswoman. She owned or had shares in at least 12 companies, involving pig farms, meat shops, slaughterhouses, pig feed, food processing, car trading, and clothing, which are located in Manila, Quezon, Bataan Province, and Bamban.
In 2019, Alice bought the farmland where Baofu is located, about 79,000 square meters—almost the size of 9 football fields—and applied for a reclassification of the land. Within two weeks, the application was approved, and the agricultural land was changed to commercial and residential use.
Alice later said that she met restaurant owner Huang Zhiyang while selling pork near the port area of Clark in Bamban, and he suggested she buy land and build houses in Bamban, so they became partners. "Baofu was all managed by Huang Zhiyang; I just applied for the permits," Alice said. "I didn't know he was a fugitive; he often went to other countries and sometimes brought me gifts."
In 2021, when Alice started her campaign for mayor of Bamban, she divested from Baofu park, and most of the shares were taken over by a resident of Quezon City. Now, PAOCC can't find that resident of Quezon City and believes Alice's divestment was just a formality: the construction cost of Baofu park was estimated at about 746 million pesos, but Alice held 50% of the shares, with a capital of only 1.2 million pesos.
But the residents of Bamban didn't know all this; they saw a lovely, approachable, and kind mayoral candidate.
The self-proclaimed Alice Guo, born in 1986, gave money, cakes, and food to the elderly and children. She liked to dance and often shared her life through short videos.
The people of Bamban liked Mayor Guo. Unlike the previous mayor who mostly stayed in Manila, Mayor Guo spent most of her time in Bamban. She actively attracted investment, built a health center, repaired roads, organized free dental checks for the residents, and vaccinated cats and dogs against rabies. Her activity of giving birthday cakes to the elderly continued from her campaign to after she was elected.
"She is kind and helpful, always providing free rides during transport strikes," said a 7-11 convenience store employee in Bamban. "If there is an event or funeral, she would attend and provide free tents and chairs."
The 7-11 convenience store was also introduced to Bamban by Mayor Guo, who also brought the first McDonald's and Jollibee (a famous Filipino fast food chain) to Bamban.
With the city hall as the center, Mayor Guo built the POGO park to the west and McDonald's to the east. She said that at least 200 Bamban families got jobs at POGO.
Until May 2024, no one doubted Mayor Guo's identity. The people of Bamban believed she was born in the provincial capital of Tarlac Province, only 20 kilometers away from Bamban, and grew up in Bamban.
After the Philippine authorities investigated Mayor Guo, she remained quite popular. Her supporters encouraged her on social media, put up supportive banners in town, and told the media that losing Mayor Guo would be a great loss.
In May, Mayor Guo attended two hearings investigating Baofu Real Estate, where she could not clarify her life before becoming Mayor Guo: she had no school records from elementary to university, and her birth was not registered until she was 19; she owned substantial properties but could not explain their sources; she partnered in businesses but said she did not know the other party.
In late June, the Philippine National Bureau of Investigation confirmed through fingerprint matching that Mayor Guo's full name is Alice Leal Guo, and she is the same person as Alice Guo who immigrated to the Philippines with her mother in 2000. She was not born on July 12, 1986, but on August 31, 1990.
There indeed was an Alice Leal Guo born on July 12, 1986, in the Philippines, with typical Southeast Asian features, an oval face, thick lips, thick eyebrows, and deep eye sockets. Alice Guo assumed the identity information of Alice Leal Guo, and then the real Alice Leal Guo disappeared.
Photos of two women both named Alice Leal Guo. (Hearing materials)
From Alice Guo to Alice Guo
In the Philippines, it is common for mayors to participate in hearings when investigating POGO, usually to investigate whether local governments are criminal umbrellas.
In the first inquiry about Alice Guo and Baofu park on May 10, Alice Guo prepared a complete story: she bought the land for Huang Zhiyang to develop, divested herself, and knew nothing about the illegal activities.
However, Risa Hontiveros, chair of the Philippine Women, Children, and Family Relations Committee, who has been firmly opposed to POGO in recent years, came prepared. She began to inquire about Alice Guo's family background based on the substantial properties under her name, and Mayor Guo's narrative began to collapse.
"Where were you born, in a hospital, at home, or in a maternity clinic?" Hontiveros asked.
"Honorable congresswoman, as far as I know, I was born at home," Alice Guo answered.
"At home. Where was your home at that time?"
"Honorable congresswoman, I don't remember," she replied.
"Then, I'm curious, which elementary school did you graduate from?"
"I was educated at home because we lived on a farm," Alice Guo answered.
Hontiveros continued to ask Alice Guo where she attended high school and university, and the answers were all that she was educated at home on the farm. Then, based on the registration information of Alice Guo's pork shop, Hontiveros asked her if the other two Guos registered were her relatives, and she replied that she was not sure.
Such answers caused an uproar at the hearing, raising doubts about her identity: if she was not Filipino, she could not run for mayor. Thirteen days after the hearing, Alice Guo accepted a TV interview—by then, the public still only knew her as Alice Guo. The first question was: Mayor Guo, are you Filipino?
"I am Filipino," she answered.
Who is Alice Guo? Based on the transcripts of four hearings, PAOCC's investigation files, and business documents, we roughly sketch out Alice Guo:
She was born on August 31, 1990, in Jinjiang City, Fujian Province, China, into a wealthy family. She is the eldest sister, with two younger brothers and a younger sister. Since the 1980s, her father, Guo Jianjiang, has been running pig farms, clothing factories, embroidery factories, and restaurants in the local area and has also been involved in real estate development.
But by the late 1990s, due to overexpansion, Guo Jianjiang had accumulated a lot of debt.
While Guo Jianjiang was in debt, in 1999, his wife Lin Wenyi invested $75,000 in the HuaFei Embroidery Center registered in the Philippines. The following year, Lin Wenyi used this investment to apply for a special investor residence visa in the Philippines for herself and her three children, including Alice Guo. For the next three years, Alice Guo attended the Christian Linghui Chinese School in the Philippines.
In 2005, Alice Guo obtained a birth certificate for Alice Guo and a Philippine passport. In 2011, Lin Wenyi changed her investment visa to a retirement visa, and Alice Guo was no longer listed as a dependent.
The Men Behind Alice
In 2019, Alice Guo came forward to buy the land in Bamban and began to develop the Baofu park. Her partners included Huang Zhiyang, Filipino Rachel Joan Malonzo Carreon, Zhang Ruijin (transliterated) holding a Chinese passport, and Baoying Lin (transliterated) holding a Dominican passport, the latter two involved in a 3 billion SGD money laundering case in Singapore in 2023, who pleaded guilty in 2024. Additionally, Huang Zhiyang is also the boss of Lucky South 99, the largest POGO in the Philippines, located just 24 kilometers from Baofu.
Huang Zhiyang, the behind-the-scenes boss of Baofu and Lucky South 99, has been wanted by the Chinese government for many years.
Also in 2019, Alice Guo, representing Hongsheng Company, applied for a permit from the Bamban city government to operate POGO in the Baofu park. This was the first and only POGO in Tarlac Province. By then, Hongsheng had already obtained a license from the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (PAGCOR) to legally engage in gaming operations.
In 2021, Alice Guo prepared to run for mayor of Bamban and was elected the following year. In February 2023, the Philippine police raided Hongsheng for its involvement in cryptocurrency scams, revoked Hongsheng's POGO license, and pursued three executives, including Yu Zheng Can (transliterated) and Huang Zhiyang.
But Hongsheng continued to operate secretly in Bamban until October 28, 2023, when a company called Zunyuan Technology applied for a temporary POGO license, and Hongsheng thus transformed into Zunyuan. It was Alice Guo who approved Zunyuan's local permit and tacitly allowed them to operate on floors beyond the permitted scope.
Alice Guo's account also had substantial financial transactions with Yang Hongjiang's account, whose Philippine business partner was the founder of another illegal POGO, Brickhartz Technologies Inc. Yang Hongjiang also signed a congratulatory letter to Alice Guo from the Philippine Jinjing Chamber of Commerce.
But Yang Hongjiang's more noteworthy identity is the brother of Yang Hongming, who was an economic advisor to former Philippine President Duterte.
The Rise and Fall of POGO
From 2016 to 2022, hundreds of POGOs were licensed in the Philippines, with nearly 300 licensed POGOs in 2019 alone.
The taxes and licensing fees from POGO brought substantial revenue to the Philippine government. From 2017 to October 2022, the total taxes collected by the Philippine government from POGO reached 53.8 billion Philippine pesos (about 6.7 billion RMB). Especially during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, the Duterte government explicitly encouraged POGO and supported increasing taxes on POGO.
According to the Nikkei Asian Review, POGO employed over 500,000 foreigners, involving serious human trafficking, mainly victimizing residents of mainland China, followed by Southeast Asian countries.
According to the testimony of PAOCC Deputy Minister Cruz, in 2023, in the three areas of Metro Manila, the Southern District, and the Northern District, they received about 60-63 reports of foreigner deaths related to POGO.
"We can confirm that in some cases, they were related to POGO because they were once POGO employees. Some of their family members and colleagues reported them missing, and some ransom videos showed them being tortured; in some sad cases, the videos showed their bodies," Cruz confirmed. He also affirmed that these victims were often repeatedly trafficked among different POGOs and suffered greatly.
In early July 2024, Bataan Province, near Bamban, reported the recent discovery of the bodies of 9 foreigners, including
