The Pasig City Regional Trial Court has found former Bamban Mayor Alice Guo and several co-accused guilty beyond reasonable doubt of orchestrating a network
The Pasig City Regional Trial Court has found former Bamban Mayor Alice Guo and several co-accused guilty beyond reasonable doubt of orchestrating a network that coerced Filipino and foreign workers into forced online scamming activities. The verdict sentenced Guo to reclusion perpetua, which is a maximum sentence of 40 years in prison.
The employees were recruited under the guise of customer-service work for Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators (POGO). However, the court found that the businesses inside the Baofu Land Development compound were not licensed offshore gaming operators and instead served as fronts for large-scale trafficking and fraud.
The ruling is particularly significant as it marks the first conviction in the country for organising and directing a trafficking scheme, a decisive escalation in the Philippines’ campaign to dismantle criminal activity operating under offshore gaming structures.
In addition to the custodial sentence, the court ordered the forfeiture of the 7.9-hectare Baofu property, which housed the Zun Yuan Technology complex previously raided by authorities for trafficking and forced labour.
Payment records, permits, and corporate documents directly linked Guo and her family’s company to the management and financing of the complex. The court detailed a structured organisation in which Guo and her foreign business partners controlled the acquisition of the property and approved the creation of a corporate structure that masked beneficial ownership, including the use of “dummy” incorporators to circumvent land-ownership restrictions.
The verdict was widely welcomed by the country’s legislative leaders who had previously chaired the Senate committee investigations into POGO activity.
Senator Risa Hontiveros called the ruling a victory against corruption, human trafficking, cybercrime, and many other transnational crimes. She issued a warning to those who facilitated the operations: “The Philippines is not a playground for exploitation, infiltration, and espionage. Accountability is coming.”
Senator Sherwin Gatchalian, one of the strongest legislative critics of POGO operations, also welcomed the verdict as a “big win” for the Filipino people. Gatchalian added that the conviction “should serve as a wake-up call against Filipinos or foreign nationals alike who seek to take advantage of the bureaucracy to carry out atrocities such as human trafficking and online scams.”
The human trafficking case is one aspect of Guo’s widening legal exposure; she also faces dozens of money-laundering charges related to financial flows within the same compound.
The conviction strongly validates the government’s policy shift against the sector. In July 2024, during his State of the Nation Address, President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. announced the total ban on POGO in the country, citing that the operations had ventured into illicit areas furthest from gaming, such as financial scamming, human trafficking, kidnapping, and murder. The court’s findings reinforce the president’s position that the POGO label was being used to facilitate deep criminal activity behind layers of corporate entities.
The life sentence handed to former Mayor Alice Guo is arguably the most consequential anti-POGO victory the Philippines has achieved to date. It transcends the typical regulatory fine or deportation and successfully targets the political and corporate architecture that enabled the criminal enterprise.
The crucial legal precedent here is the conviction for organising and directing the trafficking scheme. This allows prosecutors to hold the financial and political enablers, such as Guo, directly liable for the human rights abuses, rather than just prosecuting the low-level recruiters. Combined with the swift forfeiture of the massive Baofu property, this verdict ensures that both the political leadership and the financial assets of the criminal POGO hub are neutralised.
Coming after President Marcos Jr. signed the total POGO ban into law, this conviction serves as the ultimate deterrent. It signals that the Philippines has definitively concluded that the economic benefits of the sector are vastly outweighed by the criminal and national security threats, and that the justice system is now fully committed to prosecuting those who abused the POGO framework.
