Philippine Official Raid on the Black Industrial Park
On February 25, 2024, in a park named Baofu in Bamban, a small town in the Philippines, a Vietnamese man named Danny took the chance to escape during a raid. He jumped out of the apartment building window, climbed over the west side wall, and hid between the mud, woods, and riverbed to evade 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 farm owner, a tough ex-U.S. Air Force veteran, protected Danny and reported the incident to the local police.
A building called "Jingxin 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 Baofu Park, claiming he was not harmed and had 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 POGO, that is, a Philippine Offshore Gaming Operator. In layman's terms, POGO is online gambling operated by Philippine operators, which has been legal in the past but only allowed for customers outside the Philippines.
Over the booming 20 years in the Philippines, POGO has brought substantial revenue to the Philippine government and has also brought numerous crimes such as murder, human trafficking, kidnapping for ransom, severe illegal detention, abuse, drug trafficking, etc., to the Philippines and its neighboring countries.
The farm owner's pastor friend reported the matter to the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission (PAOCC). On the day the ticket was about to expire, PAOCC personnel came to the farm, took Danny away, and placed him in a safe house in Manila.
Danny's escape perhaps encouraged others who were trapped. A few days later, a Malaysian named Dylan contacted the Malaysian Embassy in the Philippines using a POGO company phone and also sent 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 Baofu Park on March 13.
Baofu Park, adjacent to the Bamban City Hall, is the largest and most modern building complex in the area. The office building at the entrance is almost as wide as the park itself, with bungalows and four to six-story buildings behind it, featuring a supermarket and restaurant, as well as 14 villas and a standard swimming pool.
The villas are decorated in a Chinese style: round marble dining tables, 10 solid wood tea tables, root carvings covering one wall, calligraphy and couplets with the character "Home" everywhere. According to the PAOCC report, three of the villas are connected by underground tunnels, and under one villa worth 40 million pesos (about 5 million RMB), there is a wine cellar worth several million pesos.
Buildings in Baofu Park, with couplets on the doors (hearing materials)
According to Dylan's testimony, he came to Baofu to celebrate the Spring Festival at the invitation of a friend. However, his friend left him alone, and then a man who seemed to be a manager appeared, took his phone, and said he owed the POGO company 300,000 pesos (about 37,000 RMB) and must work for POGO for free for half a year. "I was trafficked, and 300,000 pesos was the price," he thought.
Dylan tried to run away, but the security gave him two punches, and he passed out.
On the day of the PAOCC raid, there were a total of 678 staff members in Baofu Park, including 383 Filipinos, 218 Chinese, 55 Vietnamese, 16 Malaysians, 2 Rwandans, 2 Indonesians, and 1 Kyrgyz. Two months later, 167 Chinese were sent back to Shanghai, where the Shanghai police continued the investigation.
PAOCC discovered several safes, and they originally planned to drill them open, but on the day of the raid, all the drill workers disappeared, saying they were attending a meeting. The drills also disappeared, and they had to spend 10 hours finding an oxyacetylene torch. PAOCC admitted this was unprofessional because the torch's flame burned one of the safes during the opening.
But they still harvested boxes of documents, which pointed the direction for the investigation: 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, the big boss named Huang Zhiyang had been wanted by the Philippines at China's request since 2021. "He is very difficult to catch because he escapes through underground passages and helicopters," PAOCC said. They also discovered that Huang Zhiyang holds passports from China, the Federation of Saint Kitts and Nevis, and Cyprus.
PAOCC also made some extra gains: many of Baofu Park's water and electricity bills, domestic maintenance fees were paid by Alice Guo, who also represented POGO at some meetings and signed documents.
Alice Guo is exactly the mayor of Bamban.
In 2022, Alice Guo ran for mayor of Bamban as an independent and became the first female mayor of the locality by a margin of less than 500 votes.
Like many towns in the Philippines, Bamban has been mired in family politics for years. But in 2022, the former mayor, Jose Feliciano, switched to openly support Alice. After Alice was elected, her competitor said, "Even though I wanted to be mayor, if the mayor is as good a person as Alice, we don't want to oppose her."
The Mystery of Mayor Guo's Background
Tarlac is located in the central part of Luzon Island, two hours' drive from Manila, and Bamban is at its southernmost tip, named after a lush aquatic plant called Bambania. At the administrative level, Bamban is a second-tier city directly under the jurisdiction of Tarlac Province, covering an area of only 250 square kilometers with a population of less than 80,000.
The area is primarily agricultural, continuing the rural, slow-paced lifestyle, with markets busy only in the early morning and evening. This also means the locality is still very poor: frequent power outages, uneven roads, and many people living in brick bungalows. In 2020, the total income of the entire city of Bamban was less than 32 million RMB.
Before running for mayor, Alice Guo was a businesswoman. She owned or had shares in at least 12 companies, involving pig farms, butcher shops, slaughterhouses, pig feed, food processing, car trading, and clothing, etc., spread across 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 land use. Within two weeks, the application was approved, and the agricultural land was changed to commercial and residential use.
Alice later said that when she was selling pork in the nearby Clark Port area, she met restaurant owner Huang Zhiyang, who suggested she buy land and build houses in Bamban, so they became partners. "Baofu was built and operated 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 he would bring me gifts."
In 2021, when Alice began her campaign for mayor of Bamban, she divested from Baofu Park, with most of the shares taken over by a resident of Quezon City. Now, PAOCC cannot find that resident of Quezon City and believes Alice's divestment was just a formality: when Alice divested, Baofu Park was estimated to have cost about 746 million pesos (about 93 million RMB) in construction fees, but Alice's 50% shareholding was only 1.2 million pesos (about 150,000 RMB).
But the residents of Bamban didn't know all this; what they saw was a lovely, approachable, and kind mayoral candidate.
Self-proclaimed to be born in 1986, Alice has a baby face and straight black hair, a sweet voice, and a neat smile when she laughs. She visited many elderly people and women and children, hugged them tightly, gave money, cakes, and grains to the elderly and children, ran races with the children, picked fruits from trees together, and sat on the roadside eating boxed meals together.
Once she held an old grandma's hand and chatted, mentioning that she had gained weight, she pinched her own belly and let the old grandma take a look. The old grandma reached out and pinched her belly, and then both of them laughed.
She also loves to dance and often shoots short videos to share her life. In the videos, she eats very simply, her bed is piled with Disney dolls, her quilt and pillowcases are Snoopy, she has many cartoon hair clips, and various styles of Chanel bags.
She is crazy about pink, not light pink, but Barbie pink, bright fluorescent pink. Her clothes, pants, and hats are Barbie pink, her support color is Barbie pink, the chairs at the event site are Barbie pink, Bamban's Christmas tree is Barbie pink, and the gifts she gives to the citizens are also Barbie pink. After she was elected, Bamban's city government homepage also changed to Barbie pink. In PAOCC's investigation materials, her helicopter is also black with pink.
The people of Bamban really like Mayor Guo. Unlike the previous mayor who often stayed in Manila, Mayor Guo spent most of her time in Bamban. She actively attracted investment, built a new health center, repaired roads, organized free dental checks for Bamban citizens, and vaccinated cats and dogs against rabies. Her activity of delivering birthday cakes to the elderly continued from her campaign to after her election.
"She is kind and helpful, always providing free rides during transport strikes," said a 7-11 convenience store employee in Bamban, "If there are activities or funerals, she will attend and provide free tents and chairs."
The 7-11 convenience store was also introduced to Bamban by Mayor Guo, and she also brought the first McDonald's and Jollibee (Happy Bee Fried Chicken, a famous fast food chain in the Philippines) 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.
Before 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, grew up in Bamban, and sometimes did business in other cities. In an interview with Philippine TV station ABS-CBN, some elderly people said they knew her when Mayor Guo was 10 years old, and others said Mayor Guo had lived in Bamban for 20 years. But in Mayor Guo's election materials, the local residency time she provided started from May 2021.
After being investigated by the Philippine authorities, Mayor Guo remained quite popular. Her supporters encouraged her on social media, erected support banners in the town, and told the media that losing Mayor Guo would be a huge loss. Just like what fan clubs say, supporters were also saying "Waiting for Alice," "Believe in Alice," "Please give Alice some space."
In May, Mayor Guo attended two hearings investigating Baofu Real Estate. At the hearings, she could not clarify her life before becoming Mayor Guo: she had no school records from elementary to university, only had a birth registration at 19 years old; she owned huge properties but could not explain their sources; she partnered in business but said she did not know the other party; she traveled abroad with her siblings multiple times but also said she did not know them.
In late June, the Philippine National Bureau of Investigation confirmed through fingerprint matching that Mayor Guo's full name was Alice Leal Guo, and she was the same person as Guo Huaping, who immigrated to the Philippines with her mother in 2000. She was not born on July 12, 1986, but on August 31, 1990.
Indeed, there was an Alice Leal Guo born on July 12, 1986, with typical Southeast Asian features, an oval face, thick lips, thick eyebrows, and deep eye sockets. Guo Huaping had taken over Alice Leal Guo's identity information, and then the real Alice Leal Guo disappeared.
From Guo Huaping to Alice Guo
When investigating POGO, it is common to require the mayor to participate in hearings, usually to investigate whether the local government is a criminal umbrella.
In the first inquiry about Guo Huaping's relationship with Baofu Park on May 10, Guo Huaping prepared a complete story: she bought land for Huang Zhiyang to develop, divested herself, and knew nothing about the illegal activities involved.
However, the chairwoman of the Philippine Women, Children, and Family Relations Committee, Hontiveros, who has been firmly opposed to POGO in recent years, also came prepared. When she started asking about the huge properties under Guo Huaping's name and her family background, 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," Guo Huaping answered.
"At home. Where was your home at that time?"
"Honorable congresswoman, I don't remember."
"Then, I'm curious, which elementary school did you graduate from?"
"I was educated at home because we lived on a farm," Guo Huaping answered.
Hontiveros continued to ask Guo Huaping 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 Guo Huaping's pork shop, Hontiveros asked her if the other two Guo surnamed individuals registered were her relatives, and she answered that she was not sure.
Hontiveros then asked Guo Huaping with a birth certificate if she had two brothers, which Guo Huaping denied, "As far as I know, I am the only child of my mother," she repeatedly emphasized. And that name Lin Wenyi, which appeared with her in many documents, she also claimed not to know. Her mother's name is Amelia Leal, but she has never seen her mother. As for the places she claimed to have lived, they happened to be next to a Philippine senator's house.
"How old were you approximately when you lived there?" the senator asked.
"Adolescence."
"About how old to how old?"
"I don't quite remember, honorable congresswoman."
"When I checked this 58 T. Santiago address, I found that it is the address of a friend of ours. So, in other words, I know the homeowner of this place, the Bayle family. So, were you renting a place in their house? What is your relationship with them?"
"Honorable congresswoman, I don't know."
Such answers caused an uproar at the hearing, raising doubts about her identity: if she is not Filipino, she cannot run for mayor. Thirteen days after this hearing ended, Guo Huaping accepted a TV interview—by this time, the outside world still only knew her as Alice Guo. The first question was: Mayor Guo, are you Filipino?
"I am Filipino," she answered.
In this TV interview, Guo Huaping told a tragic story: she was the child of her father Angelito Guo and a Filipino maid. After giving birth to her, the maid left. She grew up on a farm, had a family tutor but no friends, and felt lonely. She was also
