MANILA – In a landmark decision, a court in the Philippines has sentenced a former mayor, identified by officials as a Chinese national, on charges of human trafficking. The case revolves around the establishment of an illicit online gaming operation in a northern province, where hundreds of Chinese and other foreign nationals were coerced into executing scams.

The regional trial court in Pasig City, part of metropolitan Manila, has handed down a life sentence to Alice Guo, alongside seven other Filipino and Chinese associates. Each convicted individual is required to pay a fine of 2 million pesos, or approximately $34,000, and must also compensate the victims who brought forth the complaints.

Guo has refuted the accusations, maintaining that she holds Filipino citizenship, and denying any involvement in the alleged crimes.

Online scam centers have proliferated across Southeast Asia in recent years, particularly thriving in the border regions of Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar. The United Nations has reported that these operations have ensnared hundreds of thousands of people in what amounts to virtual enslavement. Victims are coerced by criminal organizations to defraud individuals globally through fabricated romantic relationships, fake investment opportunities, and unauthorized gambling activities.

In the Philippines, these scam enterprises have quickly established extensive compounds and leased high-end offices in Manila’s financial hubs, often evading law enforcement by bribing officials to facilitate the movement of large numbers of workers.

Philippine authorities allege that Guo is a Chinese national named Guo Huaping, who faked Filipino citizenship to run for mayor of the town of Bamban in northern Tarlac province, where she ran a sprawling illegal scam compound near the town 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.