The Underworld Podcast - The Human Trafficking Illegal Casino Kingpin Who May Have Been a Chinese Spy

Episode Date: December 10, 2024

Alice Guo was a Philippine success story, a homeschooled farmhand who rose to become a millionaire business leader. But when Guo ran for mayor of the small town of Bamban in 2022, eyebrows were raised. Sure, she was rich: but how did Guo own a helicopter, $200,000 jewelry and a McLaren sports car? Perhaps she really was an industrial savant. Or perhaps there was something a little more sinister going on, perhaps something to do with the giant offshore gambling complex located a stone’s throw from her mayoral office? Raids and a spell on the run followed. Now Guo faces trial for crimes related to one of the most lucrative criminal markets on the planet. But there’s another question, with impacts far beyond Bamban, the Philippines or even Asia. For Merch: https://underworldpodcast.myshopify.com/ Prizepicks: Use Code UNDERWORLD for $50 free after a $5 bet: https://prizepicks.onelink.me/LME0/UNDERWORLD Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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on April 30th, the powerful vocals of Demi Lovato on May 17th, and the signature Southern Country Rock of Eric church on July 19th. Tickets on sale now at Yamava Theater.com, only at Yamava Resort and Casino, celebrating its 40th anniversary. You in? Must be 21 to enter. Alice Lil Guo's life story is like something out of a rags to rich's Hollywood movie. The small town child of a Chinese pig farmer and his Filipino-made lover, Guo never attends school, diving instead into the rise and grind of entrepreneurialism. First, she expands the father's pig farm.

Then she found no fewer than a dozen companies, in everything from real estate to biotech, car sales and even embroidery. By 2018, age just 32, Guo has a swimming pool, a wine cellar, a Ford Explorer and even a helicopter. She wears Gucci belts and Prada shirts, Lubitans and Louis Vuittons, and she carries her belongings around in a tote by Goyard, one of the most exclusive ateliers in Paris. This is not your average luxury, far less in Bamban, a town of 80,000 people around 100 miles north of Manila in the Philippines. The locals there are more likely to ride around on Tuktuks and mopeds, not a gunmetal McLaren 620R sports car, one of only 350 ever made. But Alice Gouro isn't done yet.

In 2022, she runs to become mayor of Bamban, posting peppy, family, friends, slogans to social media. That June, she rumps to victory, becoming one of the Philippines's youngest and brightest political players. Who funded her run, however, nobody quite knows. Nor how she managed to max out her campaign budget in such a short space of time. Perhaps Guo is simply as shoole a political operator as she is a business chief. Or perhaps, it's got something more to do with the office complex that sits right beside

her mayoral office, a maze of white-walled buildings that dwarfs Bamban's tiny town centre. Rumor has it, there's a pogo inside. No, not the best-selling Christmas toy of 1983, a Philippine offshore gaming operator. There are hundreds of these places, they're dotted all around the Philippines, and there are hundreds more across Southeast Asia, beaming casino games and sportsbooks into the smartphones and laptops of people based mostly in mainland China. It doesn't seem to matter that all forms of betting are illegal in China.

After all, there's little a VPN can't do. And operators in Vietnam and Cambodia have grown so brazen in their pursuit of Chinese gambling riches that their Mandarin language logos are plastered across the shirts of English Premier League soccer teams. Many are run by Chinese gangsters and they're part of a global black market reckoned to be worth $1.7 trillion. dollars. Yes, a trillion. Illegal gambling is now more lucrative than drugs, human trafficking and even counterfeiting. It has turned triads and golden triangle gangsters into billionaires,

armed rebels in Myanmar, and lined the pockets of officials and despots from Saigon to Shanghai. China says it's going after these guys, and in some cases it is. But the truth is a little cloudier than Beijing would like to admit. During COVID, these syndicates switch gears, from gambling to scams, and from staff to slaves, forced in prison-like conditions to hook folks on romance and crypto swindles. And as Alice Guo's mayoral term rolls into 2023, it looks increasingly like one of these gangs is shacked up in Bamban. In February 20203, cops raid the town, shutting down its resident Pogo. But three months later, another, even bigger one, takes its place.

In March 2024, authorities ransack Bam Bam once more. They find evidence of digital scams, high-power firearms, and over 800 alleged victims of human trafficking. Some have been tortured. Guo is summoned to a Senate hearing in Manila, where a Hollywood life story quickly crumbles under questioning. She can't remember the names of any of her homeschooling tutors, nor where she was born.

When a senator asked Guo what her mother's name is, she draws another blank. Hindi corner Paul Malala, she says again. I can't recall it anymore. In fact, one senator discovers Gouro's birth name isn't Alice at all, and she wasn't even born in the Philippines. Her fingerprints matched those of Gouo Har Ping,

a Chinese national. And her supposed birthplace, it looks suspiciously like a Chinese Communist Party office. Mayor Alice, or should I say Guo Harping, says one interrogator, channeling Colombo, is a fake Filipino. She is a Chinese national masquerading as a Filipino citizen to facilitate crimes being committed by Pogo's. Alice Gow is a tinker, a tailor, a criminal soldier, but is she a spy? Either way, her tale is just beginning. Pretty soon Gouh flees the Philippines and leads cops on a wild chase across.

across Asia. What the hell is going on? And how is this moneybag's mayor connected to cartels, corrupt lawmakers, and the Chinese state? Welcome to the underworld podcast. Hello, and thanks for tuning into the weekly audio expose where two journalists who wish their lives are taking different paths come together and tell tales of high crime and low morals. Yeah, I am Sean Williams and Wellington, New Zealand, and I'm joined by writer and documentarian Danny Gold in New York City. Danny, Assad has fallen. Does this mean you're going to be out reporting on the revolution in Damascus anytime soon? Or I guess at least filling shipping containers full of Capiton.

You know, I think my travels in Syria are a last decade sort of thing. I don't think, have I been there since the end of 2014? I don't think I have. Would have been cool to be in Damascus over the weekend, though. That would have been, you know, super interesting. But no, I am not going to move into the Capagon trade. Instead, I'm going to look into franchising some Popeyes, you know, maybe in Aleppo, maybe in Homes. Everybody, everywhere in the Middle East,

doesn't matter your faction. They love Popeyes. They love Popeyes, just like everyone else in the world, Sean. It unites us all those chicken and biscuits. It's a hard sell. So Cassians, Popeyes. Drew's Popeyes. Yeah, I like that.

Syrians deserve a three-piece. You know what I'm saying? Well, I mean, we're doing a Philippine story today, so it should be Jolly Bees, I guess, which is, yeah, I'm not a huge fan. But this was probably, I don't know, must be up there with my longest cold opens ever. And it's just because there is tons to pack in today, which comes off the back of a piece I published yesterday as we're recording this at the

wire. Big shout to talented, friendly and well-paying editors. They are rare, but they do still exist. Please share the article on socials if you can, guys. It makes me look good and, yeah, helps feed my family, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, life is good. I was at the test match this weekend. I scored my first goal of the summer season at football, late run, cheeky volley, backpost, nice. but didn't even move. We're going to gloss over the Ritback pass that ended in a goal for the Opo. It's a new year, which is exciting.

If you're there, reach out. Perhaps we can meet for a flat white or something. And then I'm heading off on a mad assignment to, yeah, get this. Seoul, Warsaw, Zagreb, and London for a day. So, Rekkes for those first three cities would be very welcome. I'm going to try and do some stuff for the show as well while I'm there. So if anyone knows a Korean gangster, put me in touch. And a shout out to my long-suffering girlfriend

because she is going to be covering on parent duty while I'm away, including a trip to Manila a week or two after that. So, yeah, thanks to her. All right, dear diary, wrap up the calendar expose right here. Yeah, yeah, that was long as well, wasn't it? Anyway, bonus episodes coming thick and fast in the lead up to Christmas and New Year. We got El Salvador, Australia, Hawaii,

and a bunch more besides on the Patreon. If you haven't already reviewed and followed on Spotify, please do that. It's a massive boost. I'm missing anything like merch or something? You've been spending any more time with Russian gangsters lately? No, but there is a guy who I forgot the message over WhatsApp this weekend with all the excitement. And you just reminded me to do that. So I will get back in touch with you if you're listening.

There is actually another Russian gangster as a second guy. Yes, there is. Wow. Okay. So back to today's. episode, The Mad Tale of Alice Guo. By the way, guys, I know I'm supposed to say that Gwar or something, but I'm not going to do that. The mayor who maybe ran an illegal gambling and scamming syndicate and then went on the run and might be a Chinese spy.

It's got pretty much everything, this one. And it all ties into a criminal underworld making trillions of dollars a year, whether it's from bets or human trafficking or drugs or crypto or so-called pig-butchering scams that are becoming such a fixture of the global black market that even Mexico's CJNG are getting in on them. We've actually gotten into this stuff on the show before. I remember a couple of years ago I did an episode with Nathan Southern and Lindsay Kennedy on scam compounds across Southeast Asia and us through you chatted again for a bonus a few months back on some of the numbers in the numbers are nuts in this industry. I also spoke with the charity Blue Dragon, the leader of them, and they rescue people from.

slavery in the region, and it's believed that over 200,000, I think 220,000 people are now trafficked into working at these places. They prop up entire governments, they fuel war. And in the Philippines, where they're called Pogo's, they've created a whole other set of problems, some of which are tied into the country's brutal drug war that has raged since 2016 under former President Rodrigo Duterte. And we'll get into that, and Duterte's latest attempt to claw back power a bit later on, alongside the future of Alice Gouro and the Pogo's, and they're spread into the Middle East, Africa, and even South America. But there's a lot to get to before we're there. Yeah, I mean, this is one of those episodes, those Sean ones, where I saw the title, and I'm like,

what is this guy going to get into right now that's, like, weird and semi-adjacent to what we do, but, you know, that pulled open, I'm like, this is, like, this is incredible stuff that I don't think a lot of people know about, so we need, we need more of this. Yeah, if more criminals could go on the lamb throughout Indonesia, then we would have a lot more episodes to do. So please think about that, guys. But now let's start at the beginning, of course, which, yeah, that's a good place to start.

And for this episode, that is 2003. Let's head back there, listeners. It's a simpler time, a better time. Mark Zuckerberg has only just launched FaceMash. Charlton Athletic are on their way to finish in a record seventh in the Premier League. It's going to make me cry. and the young Sean Williams is packing his bags for university, heading a whopping 50 miles from Dartford to Reading

in search of independence and academic enlightenment. This is also the year when the Philippine government issues its first Pogo license. Now, the first online casino in the world, Gaming Club, that's been around since 1994, but the iPhone won't come around until 2007. So right now, in 2003, physical casinos are, the industry. Although, you know, in the U.S., I do think this was right around the time you had this like poker craze, I think a couple years after Rounders came out. And we were all, like, everyone at

college was playing poker online. I think it was called like poker stars and whatever else it was. And like the real D-Gens, they were timing their playing sessions to like when the bars closed in Tokyo or Shenzhen, wherever it was or Beijing. I just remember, like I had friends that made a lot of money playing online poker at that time. I think they made. made an illegal a couple years later. But it was like, it was massive, dude. Wow, this is, this is really aging us. I think I remember like paying 10 cent games of online pool maybe around this time as well.

So yeah, you know, the uptick's there, but I didn't make a single penny. Anyway, these casinos, right, they make the majority of their cash, luring Chinese gamblers abroad on so-called junkets, many of which are organized by triad groups, operating out of home. Hong Kong or Macau. And these casinos are strange chintsy spots, oftentimes located in shadily arranged free zones in border regions. The most notorious of them?

That's the King's Romans, of course. Giant jungle Vegas, the size of around 10 central parks, whose main building has got a big golden blue crown on top of it. You know this place, guys, because I went there, it's the star of our Burmese meth lab episodes. It's technically in Lao, but it runs on Beijing time, spends you on, and all the signs there. in Mandarin. The land belongs to Lao, a bar owner told me when I traveled there, but, quote,

the sky belongs to China. So the whole place is owned by a Chinese former timber merchant called Zhao Wei, and he uses the free zone to ship drugs, wash meth cash, traffic wildlife and people, and run child prostitution rings, top lad. You know, you got to diversify your portfolio. True, that. Bonjour, compadre. It's the price line negotiator. How do I negotiate so much. How do I negotiate so many great travel deals, my greatest gadget. The Price Line app. It's got hotel deals, flight deals, rental car

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And the Kings Romans and casinos across Southeast, Asia are making billions, and I mean tens of billions of dollars, mostly from gambling. So the Philippines, which is hardly a wealthy nation, is thinking it wants a piece of this messy pie. But for years, nothing happens with the Pogo's. That is, until Rodrigo Duterte comes along. Of course, we've done a show on him too. I think way back in 2020, this podcast is like Trump tweets now. Brief biography, long-time mayor of the city of Davao in the southern island of Mindanaal,

gets a brutal rep for killing drug slingers with the help of a death squad comprised of gangsters and drug lords. In 2016, Duterte runs for presidents saying, quote, If I make it to the presidential palace, I will do just what I did as mayor. You drug pushers, hold up men and do nothings, you better get out because I'll kill you. And that is a very go-hard quote for a presidential candidate. And kill them, Duterte does. His drug war turns the streets of Manila and its surrounding cities red with, blood. The death toll is estimated at between 12 and 30,000 civilians killed. I've reported it a bunch

and yeah, I'm going to be doing so again in a couple months. Kind of looking forward to and dreading that. And we'll record especially when I'm on the road there, probably around late February or so. But Duterte is also keen as hell on Pogo's and they multiply like crazy under his rule. He's a kleptocrat, essentially and it's strongly rumored that he, his family and political lieutenants are making bank off the Pogo's. But despite there now being hundreds of these operations, targeting the illegal Chinese market that's worth a trillion dollars, they don't contribute much to the Philippine economy. In 2019, for example, Pogo's hand over just $154 million in taxes, which is a paltry sum. A good comparison might be to Sun City, the Macau-based gambling firm run by glossy CEO Alvin Chow.

That same year, he alone is making $100,000. $145 billion. Something in the Philippines is beginning to stink, and it's not just the durian. Between 2017 and 2020, 4 million Chinese visit the Philippines on tourist visas and more than 100% increase on the previous four years. A Senate inquiry claims they aren't sightseers, but in fact Chinese flooding in to work illegally at betting firms. These folks are known colloquially as, quote, spinach farmers, because the mandarin for spinach

is similar to the word for gambling. By this time, the Pogoes have sprouted their own cottage industries. For example, in 2019, Philippine cops rescue 199 women, including a minor, from prostitution serving staff at Pogoes. They're also rumoured to be laundering money for triads and Chinese gangsters wanted by the state, and in some cases, they're even thought to be involved in the meth trade that's fueling a wild addiction crisis and Duterte's bloody drug war. This whole time, Beijing is begging Duterte to shut down the Pogo's. Their citizens are losing billions to online gambling,

and people are leaving the country to work in betting centers. Plus, the Richards heading out of China, that's a massive headache in terms of capital flight. It's undermining the state. Should we be like setting these up in the states, like me and you, like a sort of, you know, You want to keep sending fentanyl precursors to Mexico. We're going to, like, cool. We're going to teach Chinese people how to make parles from the states and our casino. Like, is that, am I, am I a geopolitical, diplomatic genius?

Like, I want in on this. Like, we'll solve a lot of problems. And it could also be our ticket to get incredibly rich. Like, holler at me, Trump people. Let me get a casino license. Let's make this happen. I mean, like, that is not that far from the. truth, right? I mean, we got into it with the money laundering from China episode where,

you know, like everyone says they want to stop money laundering coming out of China, but actually the Americans are like, well, you guys are losing billions of dollars. So maybe we don't want to stop it that much. And it's like a similar kind of thing here. Anyway, the Chinese Communist Party. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, hold on. What's the, like, what, Mahjong, what is it, Paigau? Let's just, let's make this happen. I mean, you know, email us. If you're a casino, if you're a casino, consultant, email us, let's make it happen. Oh my God, Danny's going to start running opium things.

Yeah, the CCP, it steps up raids on illegal gambling centers across Southeast Asia, especially in Myanmar's Kokang region where a handful of crime families have grown incredibly rich off the back of the betting black market. Listen to our Kokane Cowboys episode from earlier this year for more on that topic. But there is evidence that China's pursuit of these syndicates might not. not be quite as full-throated as they're trying to claim. For one, many operators are closely intertwined with party and state authorities across the world. In some cases, they've even poured money into CCP infrastructure projects in Asia, part of China's so-called Belt and Road Initiative,

or BRI. That's like the biggest infrastructure project in the world. Second, the money from Pogoes and their regional equivalents often line the pockets of corrupt officials who are pro-China, in Lao or Cambodia or Vietnam or, in the case of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, who despite his country's long history of Washington, the Philippines was actually a U.S. colony for a short while, kicks off his presidential tenure by calling Barack Obama a quote, son of a whore and courting Chinese investment. I mean, appropriates of nothing, like calling someone a son of a whore is, it's funny.

You know, it's like a deadwood, it's like a deadwood-ass insult, you know? Well, he also called the Pope that and said that loads of priests of paedophiles, which, you know, I mean, my own personal views aren't far from there. Anyway, which he gets this investment, by the way, from China to the tune of $24 billion in 2016, which is a lot of money. So, even if China is actually mad about the Pogoes, it looks like they're happy to let them carry on targeting Chinese gamblers so long as Duterte keeps slagging off Obama and cozying up to Beijing. So to recap, the Pogo's have gone gangbusters under Duterte, and despite China claiming it wants them shut, they're paying off the right people. So it's kind of an evil that China will abide. And all this time, Alice Guo or Guo Hua Ping is building herself up as a businesswoman in this small town of Ban Ban, north of Manila, under the radar of the capital's political power brokers.

But now we're up to 2020. And that year, everything changes. For Guo, the Pogo's and Asian organized crime. Because that year, the COVID-19 pandemic hits. And economies across the world head into lockdowns. China bans all foreign travel and the gambling junkets pretty much die overnight, shuttering the region's giant casinos. Anybody working in the Pogo's and their regional counterparts either heads home or stays away from work. This is bad news for the chiefs of these syndicates. I mean, they can hardly just apply for furlough. So they got entrepreneurial, turning over greater percentages of their business to online gambling, which of course, stuck at home, Chinese people do more and more during the pandemic. I mean, look up China,

gambling, it is nuts how much those people gamble. COVID might have strangled the supply of spinach farmers, so the syndicates begin trafficking people into gambling compounds, either with false promises of employment or just straight off the street. They also leveraged their expertise in social media marketing and cryptocurrency to pivot to an even more profitable and even more predatory underworld. Pig butchering. You've probably heard of pig butchering, or Shahjupan, scams before.

The phrase alludes to the fattening of a hog before slaughter, comparing it to the way a scammer will slowly gain the trust of a mark before stealing their money. A typical pig butchering scam will begin on, say, Instagram, just so we can nod to our own catchphrase. A victim might get a mess. from a young woman in search of love who builds a rapport over time. It might take weeks or even months to the woman to suggest a great investment scheme or cryptocurrency for the victim to invest in.

And then when they do, the woman, of course, disappears along with the money. You know, I was just thinking, like, what if you are a young Chinese woman and you're trying to find a Western guy and texting them and just getting yelled at and blocked randomly? Everyone thinks you're just a scammer. You know, it's a tough road out there. And I think the ones texting you, Sean, they're probably real. So you might want to engage. They are real. And Tether is a great investment. But yeah, collateral damage of organized crime. It's just a horrible world that we have to report on. Anyway, this is, if you haven't twigged it already, this is basically a simple new twist on the old Nigerian print scam used by groups like the Black Axe, I think episode one or two. It costs nothing to set up, and its earnings are huge.

Between January 2020 and February this year, pig-butchering scams have rated in around $75 billion, around nine tenths of whose victims are Chinese men. Here's Jeremy Douglas, Southeast Asia and Pacific Chief at the UNODC. Quote, while governments in the region were preoccupied with vaccine rollouts, border closures and quarantines, major crime syndicates running casinos adapted. They established user-friendly websites and smartphone apps, integrated sophisticated information and blockchain technology,

and jumped on board with cryptocurrency trading and fourth-party payment providers to facilitate and off-scape cross-border payments. And they did it at a pace most private companies would envy. I mean, all of those words, they would get you millions at a VC meeting. Anyway, because you could never really tell whether someone sitting on a computer is operating an illegal gambling site or scamming. it's basically impossible for cops to know how much of a Pogo's operations are in either industry. So in the wake of the pandemic, you now have Pogoes that are a mix of gambling and scams

and staffed largely by indentured laborers. That's the thing about like sophisticated and smart organized crime groups, right? Like they always know how to diversify. You know, you look at the cartels, right? It's not just cocaine and fents. Like there's human smuggling trafficking, black market oil. taxing lime and avocado farmers. These groups become, like, they're hydras.

You know, you can't, they just have ways and means, and they're going to get money any way they can. Yeah, I think we spoke to Louis Chaparro, like last year about how the Sinalans are getting into jellyfish trafficking to China. I mean, they're everywhere. And these groups are no different. I mean, some of these scam compounds, they've got barbed wire fencing, grated windows, security, armed,

torture and even murder aren't that uncons. common. What is even weirder is that in the Philippines, these Pogos seem to pose a national security threat too. Many are located uncomfortably close to Army, Navy and Air Force bases, with raiding officials discovering IDs and uniforms belonging to the People's Liberation Army, the PLA, which is China's two million strong military. I spoke to Jason Tower at the U.S. Institute of Peace for my article. He explains the messiness of China's relation to these firms like this. quote, the narrative back home in China is that the Chinese police are highly successful at keeping their national safe from online scamming and that they're doing a good job of identifying or capturing

an extra-drying criminals. But the caveat here is that many of these criminals are protected, either because of massive levels of corruption across the country, challenges in terms of overlapping jurisdictions or political infighting. A recent Washington Post investigation revealed how China had secretly be backing scammers in Koukang, even as it was publicly going after them, because the scammers were allied to the pro-Beijing military hunter in Myanmar. I mean, you see how this is so complicated? China has to show its people it's cracking down on illegal gambling and scams, because otherwise it would look ridiculous.

But actually, it's helping prop up a lot of the syndicates, either because of corruption or good old-fashioned rail politic. But how does Alice Guo and Bamban clatter headfirst into that? this crazy world. Well, in 2020, she applies to the Pogo license of Hong Sheng, a gambling operation based in that huge lambretthine complex I mentioned earlier. She owns half that land, by the way. She bought it alongside two Chinese, a Filipino and a Cypriot with the suspiciously non-Greek name of Huang Zhizang. It's surely after this that she's spotted walking around, I mean, I don't want to say that anyone called Huang Ji-Zang has bought their Cypriot passport,

but, you know, I'll just leave that there. It's surely after this. this, that she's spotted walking around Bamban wearing a $200,000 Bolgari necklace. Get that bag, Alice. Then Guo becomes mayor, just as Duterte is replaced as president by Ferdinand Bongbong Marcos Jr. Amazing name. Now, Marcos's namesake father, a dictator reckoned to a stolen $10 billion from the Philippines coffers, was ousted in 1986 with more than a helping hand from Washington, D.C. But that doesn't mean he's pro-China. And Marcos Jr.'s viewed with Duterte is this Shakespearean, Montague's and Capulets deal,

multiple members of each family going at each other with insane accusations almost daily. Says Manuel Kazan the 3rd, a writer and broadcaster, quote, the big question mark that everyone was expecting was that Marcos would continue cozy and up to China because the Americans had helped kicked his father out, without considering that the takeaway of Marcus Jr.

might have been never piss off. of the Americans. So Marcos reverses Duterte's cozy enough to Beijing, and to cut off the Duterte's family's alleged funding, he threatens to shatter the Pogo's too. Hong Sheng, Alice Guo's Pogo, is raided, and by mid-2020, it has been replaced by another company called Zun Yuan. Then comes this marches raid from the Cold Open, during which cops discover 800-plus trafficked people, guns, and evidence of pig-butchering scams. Authorities discovered that Guo has 36 bank accounts, just two more than me. And the two of our associates are involved in a Singapore money laundering scandal worth over $3 billion.

That could be its own show, by the way. Check it out. Complete madness. The jurors sat in a dark room, hands resting on a Ouija board. They weren't guessing. They were asking the victim who killed them. Sounds unbelievable, right? But it happened.

And that's just one of thousands of stories waiting for you on Morning Cup of Murder. Hi, I'm Karina B. B. Dürfer. And every single day on Morning Cup of Murder, I bring you a real, chilling, true crime story connected to that exact day in history. From Killer Cannibal Brothers to the Boy Scout who was obsessed with the occult and the strange story of the bloody hammer in the frozen cabin. These aren't the cases you've heard a hundred times. They're the ones that make you stop and think, how have I never heard this before? With over 2,500 episodes and a brand new story each and every single day, morning cup of murder becomes part of your routine fast. If you like your coffee hot but your bones chilled, then sit back and start your day with a morning cup of murder.

Go listen to Morning Cup of Murder wherever you get your podcasts. And remember, stay safe. This is all pretty suss, of course. And by the summer, Philippine officials freeze her assets and summon her to a Senate hearing. Oh, is it pretty suss? Is that how you would describe it? Yeah, what, 36 bank accounts, trafficked people, guns, a McLaren. No, yeah, no, it's pretty sauce.

Bulgari necklace. Yeah, it's, definitely, it's us. Even President Marcos, it's us. In summary, it's us. Even President Marcos wades into the story. He knows all the big players up in her region, he says, and he's never heard of Alice Guo. We're wondering where she came from, he adds. How did this happen?

And that's not kind of something that you should be grandstanding on, President Marcos. But anyway, here comes the hearing. And the revelation comes that Guo is in fact Guo Huaping from Fujian province China. And that despite claiming she'd been born in the Philippines, she hasn't actually registered her birth until the age of 17. Now, there's nothing potentially damning in that last accusation. Hundreds of thousands of Sinoi or Filipino Chinese fake, birth details to become Philippine residents. I mean, that's just a fresh-off-the-boat migrant

thing around the world. But Guo's case is different. Bamban is suspiciously close to a Philippine Air Force base and she is accused of being a spy. The rest of the hearing goes just as badly. Seemingly, every question is met with the same answer. I can't recall it anymore. I won't do the Philippine again, so yeah, you can thank me for that. Gouot lights up social media with Philippine Facebook users memeifying her new catchphrase and a bunch of posts that do mad, mad, mad numbers. Guo refuses to show up to her next hearing citing emotional trauma. The Senate holds her in contempt and orders her arrest.

Emotional trauma? I mean, that's, it's incredible. Like, what a move. Like, is that a... I mean, it is pretty traumatic being outed as a Chinese spy. I mean, she, you know, she thought she was going to get away with it and then those pesky kids came along. Is she a zoomer?

How old is she? She is now 38. I'm older millennial, but I mean, can you do that? Can you get away with that in the Philippines? Well, we'll see. So then her next move is to disappear, first to Malaysia, then to Singapore and Indonesia, where Interpol agents track her down to a town just outside the capital city, Jakarta, in September. Guo arrives in Benela soon after, smiling and taking selfies with government ministers.

I have received death threats and I am asking for the help of Philippine authorities, she tells a press briefing. Sure. It's not a great look for the state, is it? Says Gilgi Engelbrecht at the International Crisis Group, quote, When Alice Guo was arrested, she met the Secretary of the Interior, local government, and they're all having selfies. A normal person for the Philippines would never be able to do that in that position. She's almost become a meme, the source of fan fiction. It's really hilarious in a way, but also deeply serious. Now, around this time, Tony Yang, the brother of Rodrigo Duterte's Lieutenant Michael Yang,

is also unmasked as a Chinese national with deep interests in Pogo's. Marcos has seen enough. These places are just so wound up with crime and bribery and tax evasion, that between Guo and Yang are just not worth the hassle anymore, and he bans them. Human trafficking is also a particularly sensitive issue in the Philippines, owe into their huge number of overseas workers, some of whom have been abused or even killed as sailors or nurses or nannies in Gulf states. I mean, this whole thing is just completely nuts, dude.

Like, this is, I don't even know how you would just, you know, weird, mafia, state, public. I just don't, I mean, Bongo Bongo has his work cut out for him. Like, this is, how do you shut this down? Well, given I've got an interview requesting with him for a couple of months, I'm going to hope that he doesn't listen to us, call it in Bongo Bongo. But yeah, maybe he does listen to the show, in which case, please share it because you've got like 50 million people online. Anyway, China's embassy in Manila actually praises Bongo Bongo for the move. Quote, we believe this decision echoes the call of the Philippine people and serves the common interests of people of both countries, it says, in a statement, I'm sure, tucking its tongue within its cheek.

China is ready to continue its strong law enforcement cooperation with the Philippines and better protect. the safety and well-being of the two people's. Fun fact, I think this comes about a month before they ram-raid a bunch of sailors in those contested islands in the South trying to sea. So all of this is a bit six and a half a dozen. I'm going to let my dog just drink her water in the corner over there. It is a hot day. Are you done, darling?

No, she's not done. She likes to get her mustache really wet and then rub it around her bowl and get the crumbs of the food, which just shows her. Don't edit this out, Dale. Make sure you leave this in. No, leave it in. Dedi, you're a star, mate. Anyway, at this point, not the point at which my dog just ate.

At this point, Alice Guo's connection to the Chinese state is mere speculation. But in September, Al Jazeera releases a documentary about a Chinese Cambodian kingpin behind bars in Thailand who's been involved in illegal gambling and pig-butchering scams. His name is Shee Zhijang. and during the film he drops a massive bombshell. Guo Hua Ping is a CCP asset, he says, showing the journalist a dossier linking her to state security. Like him, She claims,

Guo has been working for the Chinese government this whole time, and he's the person who connects her to the CCP office in Fujian province. Guo's lawyer has an inspired comeback to this evidence. He claims that Shea's testimony is AI generated. Yes, that is AI generated. a great line of argument. A month later, Shea's former cellmate tells one of the senators investigating Guo that she, quote, was a Chinese spy, but not a special one, adding that there's a, quote, correlation between Pogo's and spying operations. Again, Guo denies

the claim. She must be taking an incredible amount of trauma by this point. But in November, so last month, the Philippines top spies call her a quote, agent of influence, which stops short of calling her an outright spy, but more of an asset in the way many Chinese business people, criminals and other nationals are kept under tabs by the CCP's intelligence community. Pogo's, says Senator Risa Hontiveros, in her closing summary of the case on November 26, have been revealed to be nothing but a Trojan horse. They have exposed the web of people who use Pogo's for their own selfish interests, their own personal gain, all at the expense of the Philippine people.

Guo Hua Ping, Honovirus adds, This committee has amassed you as a Chinese national mocking our Filipino identity to amass wealth and commit crimes against true Filipinos. I leave your fate, Ms. Guo, up to our courts, and I look forward to the day you face justice. Alice Guo now faces court for a multitude of charges, including fraud, money laundering, human trafficking, and espionage.

But has her case and Marcos' ban blown a hole in the Pogo industry, both in the Philippines and abroad? Well, no, and here's why. Firstly, the Pogo's in the Philippines still haven't gone away. Marcos's ban came into effect last month, but tons of them are linked to members of his own cabinet, and some are rumoured not only to be operating still, but expanded upon. In particular, the family of one cabinet member, John Vic Romula, owns an entire island outside Manila, chocked full of office.

offshore gambling compounds. Now, these aren't exactly bricks and mortar storefronts as well. Many are hosted on servers in Japan, South Korea, even the US. So when the winds turn against them in the Philippines, they can just up sticks and set up elsewhere. Lao on Cambodian scam compounds are still going strong as ever. Jason Tower told me that, quote, they're basically stuck as semi-satellite states of China.

Lao has even unveiled its own plans for a Pogo-style government license, which tells you how much it cares about organized crime. And the King's Romans is still going strong as ever, pivoting to more digital stuff alongside a lot of drugs still. If you want to check out more about the links between gambling, scams and the Premier League, Jossimar Magazine has done some amazing work. I interview Philip O'Clair for the pot a couple of years back in a lovely pub in London, London, and he's been on this topic for ages. Likewise, Nathan and Lindsay are always publishing about this stuff and help me out of time with my reporting, so thanks for that, guys. Hopefully I will see you

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Go to CabotaUSA.com flash disclaimers for full disclaimers. Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money because behind every headline is a bottom line whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings there's a money side to every story

and when you see the money side you understand what others miss get the money side of the story subscribe now at Bloomberg.com Ryan Reynolds here from MintMobil the message for everyone paying big wireless way too much please for the love of everything good

in this world, stop. With Mint, you can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying, no judgments, but that's weird. Okay, one judgment. Anyway, give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Up front payment of $45 for three-month plan, equivalent to $15 per month required. Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See full terms at mintmobile.com. Fun story. I got a staff infection from a boxing glove and pen on pen that came hours away from killing me. Great memories. Fun story. I threw a grenade there for $15 and watched a bunch of French guys almost snored heroin. They were told was cocaine and they would have died. So that was a cool little moment. Oh, fun. Great city though. How close did they get and why did they stop? They had it like on the, it was, you know, I don't know if Lakeside. I don't think Lakeside still exists there, but it was where like all the hostels that were basically cost a dollar or $2 were. And it was also full of drugs and people selling drugs. And I guess they had bought it off. They just got there.

And they'd bought it off a guy. I guess they were looking for for Coke. And obviously that's not super easy to find there or wasn't back in the 2000s, but heroin was. So I guess he told them it was heroin. He was like, yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah, it's Coke. And they were basically like laying it out, you know? Or maybe they were just looking at the bag.

And one of the guys was like, this doesn't look like Coke. But anyway, important lessons learned there for them. Yeah, the subtext being that they were lucky they were alongside you, I guess. I was not participating in this at all, dude. I know better than to buy hard drugs at a hostel in Cambodia. Yeah, Jesus Christ, that is a bad, bad idea. We can put that on a t-shirt. Yeah, pen on pen, good city, bad drugs.

Yeah, it's such a cool place. The numbers involved in offshore gambling and scams are so huge. They're just impossible to put back in the box. And while the Philippines might buck Southeast Asia's trend and get rid of them, Pogo-like syndicates have already been discovered, in such disparate places as Palau, Dubai, Kenya, and even Peru. A senior intelligence official told me that, quote, all you need is a weak jurisdiction and a corruptible jurisdiction to go.

And frankly speaking, most countries in Africa are not going to have a clue what you're doing. It's just a bunch of guys on computers running something. Do these pogos, do they buy advertising, like on a podcast maybe? I hope so. should we reach out to the CJNG? They've probably got the marketing guy down. Anyway, all of these places are being head up by Chinese criminals, again, with close links to the Chinese state. Even the cartel, Halisco Nueva Generacion, Mexico's second largest cartel, has started dipping its toes in the pig-butchering stream. These scammers, friends of

the pod, Van der Velbaugh, Brown told me a quote, extremely embedded in business and political networks. So it takes a considerable amount of time to purge it. And the thing is, tech is making this stuff worse, not better. For the wire story, I spoke to a UN expert called John Vojichick, who it analyzes the technical side to the illegal gambling and scam industries. He argues that, quote, the evolving situation is rapidly outpacing government's capacity to contain it. John goes on, quote, against the backdrop of rapid tech innovation, adoption of new online underground marketplaces, and proliferation of crime as a service, the region has now emerged as a key testing ground for transnational criminal networks looking to expand their influence and diversify into new business lines,

including malware-enabled fraud, AI-driven crimes, and deep-fate misuse. So if pig butchering is worth 75 billion bucks today, it is probably going to pass 100 billion mark by next year, easy. And I'm not saying that hot girl on Instagram definitely doesn't want to show you a good time. Some things in the last. life are still real guys. But if you definitely want to avoid dropping all your savings into a Chinese crypto wallet, perhaps just go to a bar, order a drink, and try chatting someone up the old-fashioned way. Just like in 2003. Yeah, that's better, simpler time and not an Alice Guo insight. Wow, what a kicker right there. But, you know, oh yeah, this reminds me of the

the interplay between the Chinese government and, and, and, and the cartels. I just watched, um, Linus. Have you seen, you know, Taylor Sheridan is the guy who did, no, no, I haven't seen that yet. Dude, it is, it's good TV, but it's like the dumbest plot lines, like this imaginable involving like, you know, the CCP teaming up with Iran and the cartels to do. It's, I don't know if you ever watched that Jack Ryan show on, on Amazon, which I to stop watching because the plot line was about ISIS weaponizing Ebola and then spreading it in the White House.

Like it's that level of just overreaching stupidity of these shows that like purport to be a smart look at this stuff and then just go completely insane. Sheridan's a weird dude but make some good TV. I gotta tell you. Oh man. It's like, I have a good

reckey actually. I just started watching black doves on Netflix and it's really really good even though Kira Knightley is very strange. Patreon.com slash the Underworld podcast for bonus episodes. And you can also sign up on Spotify or on iTunes. And enjoy yourself. Yeah. Maybe I'm, I'm going to go to beach. See you later. Yeah. All right. Take care, folks. USAA knows dynamic duos can save the day like superheroes and sidekicks or auto and home insurance. With USAA, you can bundle your auto and home and save up to 10%. Tap the banner to learn more and get a quote at usa.com slash bundle.

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