Former Philippine Mayor Alice Guo Linked to Collapsed Crypto Exchange AAX

Former Philippine mayor Alice Guo has been linked to the defunct Atom Asset Exchange (AAX), which laundered and stole customers’ crypto assets in 2022. In March, Guo came to the fore for her ties to a financial slavery ring, just 100 meters from the mayor’s office in Bamban, a small town north of Manila. Investigators found nearly 1,000 workers here, most of whom ran illegal gambling operations. Some of them were trafficked and forced into pig-killing scams. Baofu is a 20-acre complex that Guo once owned 50%. Investigators found a car registered to her, three escape routes leading to empty lots in Guo’s name, and electricity bills in her name. This led investigators to find anomalies in her documents, indicating that Guo had falsified her Filipino ancestry and her fingerprints matched those of a Chinese citizen. In addition, Hong Kong police said Su Weiyi was the “mastermind” of AAX, an exchange that once had more than 2 million users and is now defunct. He is accused of embezzling at least $2.15 million in client cryptocurrency — but a petition says the figure is at least $30 million. Su Weiyi co-owned other companies with partners who are linked to convicted felons Alice Guo and Huang Zhiyang, a Baofu partner. Guo faces 87 counts of money laundering, as well as charges of operating an illegal gambling ring and human trafficking. If convicted, she and her co-conspirators could face up to 1,218 years in prison. Guo has denied all charges. (Protos)