Philippines: Eight people sentenced to life imprisonment after being found guilty of human trafficking with one defendant allegedly being compound owner
"Former Philippine mayor Alice Guo sentenced to life for human trafficking", 20 November 2025
A Philippine court … sentenced Alice Guo, a Chinese national who became a mayor
while masquerading as a Filipina, and seven others to life in prison on human trafficking charges, state prosecutors said.
Guo, who served as mayor of a town north of Manila, was found guilty of overseeing a Chinese-operated online gambling centre where hundreds of people were forced to run scams or risk torture…
More than 700 Filipinos, Chinese, Vietnamese, Malaysians, Taiwanese, Indonesians and Rwandans were found on site, along with documents allegedly showing that Guo was president of a company that owned the compound.
All eight defendants, some of whom were foreign nationals, were sentenced to life in prison, state prosecutor Olivia Torrevillas said outside a regional courthouse in Manila.
“After over just one year, the court ... gave us a favourable decision. Alice (Guo) was convicted along with seven other co-accused. Life imprisonment,” Ms Torrevillas said, declining to name Guo’s co-defendants due to a confidentiality law.
A spokesman for the Philippine Anti-Organized Crime Commission told reporters in a group chat that Guo and three others had been convicted of “organising trafficking” inside the compound.