The small-town mayor accused of trafficking and spying for China

In early 2022, residents of the rural Philippine town of Bamban, north of Manila, gathered for the mayoral campaign rally of a plucky young woman named Alice Leal Guo.

Supporters dressed in pink – their candidate's favourite colour – chattered in anticipation of her arrival.

Then came the low thudding of a helicopter rotor, prompting cheers from the crowd. Sitting in the cockpit, Guo – in a pink shirt and a pilot's headset – flashed a smile, waving down at her supporters.

As the helicopter touched down, the crowd broke into a chant: "A-lice Guo! A-lice Guo!"

At 31, Guo's star was rising: with promises of generous subsidies and economic development, all delivered in her signature brassy, upbeat tone, she had galvanised a following in the town which would see her become its first female mayor.

But few of those cheering could have predicted that less than three years later, Guo would be behind bars, facing charges of human trafficking and allegations that she was a Chinese spy.

Her downfall began with a police raid that uncovered a compound where a giant scam operation was being run from just behind her office. But as the authorities delved deeper, and Guo struggled to answer basic queries about her past, a perplexing question emerged: who really is Alice Guo?

The mayor everyone seemed to love

Guo says she came to local politics from the pig-farming business, having managed her family's commercial piggery for several years.

The career change would have required deep pockets – and when quizzed about her campaign finances much later, Guo said it was friends and acquaintances in the pig-farming business who had supported her mayoral bid.

Guo's rising star was interrupted by the discovery of a scam operation just minutes from her office in the Municipal Hall

But Guo also had connections to a number of wealthy Chinese businesspeople. Little is known about them, but some have subsequently been convicted of money-laundering, and now also face charges of human trafficking alongside Guo.

Her campaign focused on her sunny persona. On stage at one event, Guo told her audience: "For our team, rule number one is: Do no harm! No harm is allowed, we should just spread love, love, love!"

Such cheerful platitudes would carry a taint of irony, in retrospect, when authorities exposed the harm and suffering they alleged had been inflicted under Guo's watch.

But upon taking office in June 2022, she brought the youthful, bright-eyed energy of her campaign into Bamban Municipal Hall, painting it pink and decorating the outside of the building with flowers.

Bamban Municipal Hall as it was during Guo's time as mayor

"Alice was beautiful, she was kind and she was helpful to other women," said Priscilla May Aban, 31, who runs a vegetable stall in the town. She told the BBC that she had voted for Guo precisely because she was a woman, adding that as mayor, Guo had arranged cleaning jobs for women of the town.

Guo was widely regarded as a caring and empathetic leader, judging by conversations the BBC had with several residents of Bamban. Miah Mejia, the daughter of one of Alice's political allies, claimed that she had given a free scholarship to every local household. Another interviewee told us he hadn't received a college scholarship but had been given a cash subsidy for his school fees.

An emotional Francisco Flores, 75, said, "She's helped a lot of poor people here in Bamban, giving medicines and the way she is with people, you'd never see a problem."

He proudly mentioned the arrival of a McDonald's and a branch of the Philippine fast-food chain Jollibee during Guo's tenure.

Miah (L) and Francisco (R) with one of Alice Guo's mayoral campaign posters

Online, pro-Guo social media accounts portrayed her as a progressive young mayor presiding over a pink-tinted wonderland of parades, buffalo races and concerts.

A year-and-half into her mayoralty, however, this carefully crafted image began to crumble.

Inside Bamban's underbelly

In February 2024, Philippine police received a report about a Vietnamese national who had escaped from the captivity of Zun Yuan Technology Incorporated, a company operating out of a walled compound in Bamban.

On the evening of 12 March, police officers and soldiers gathered nearby to plan a raid on the site, located just a minute's walk from Guo's office in the Municipal Hall.

One officer who was there, Marvin de la Paz of the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission (PAOCC), told the BBC that around midnight, police informants sent word that people were leaving the compound in buses.

Suspecting that their plans for a raid had been leaked, Mr de la Paz and his colleagues raced straight for the compound. On the way, they saw people fleeing in the other direction, and some officers in the convoy had to peel off and chase them down. When they arrived at the site, they found one of the largest scam hubs ever uncovered in the Philippines, containing 36 buildings and spanning almost 20 acres.

"We were amazed," Mr de la Paz said, "That was our first time seeing such a grandiose entrance [to a scam compound]... Somehow you feel like you're small in this compound."

It later emerged that the compound was built on land which Guo had previously owned – and that, as mayor, she had granted Zun Yuan a business permit. Her name also appeared on an electricity bill found at the site.

Alice Guo's lawyers did not respond to the BBC's request for comment.

The compound's largest building featured a liquor store, teahouse and nightclub

Zun Yuan was purportedly an online gambling and entertainment company, which held a Philippine Offshore Gaming Operator (Pogo) licence – accreditation that previously allowed such entities to operate legally in the Philippines.

A relaxation in gambling regulations under ex-President Rodrigo Duterte in 2017 led to a surge of Pogo-driven business activity. But many scam syndicates also found Pogo licences useful for masking their criminal operations – and PAOCC told the BBC they found evidence that Zun Yuan was running "pig-butchering" scams from its office in the compound.

Pig-butchering is a con where scammers take time to build trust with victims by posing as lovers or prospective business partners, then trick them into investing their money into fraudulent schemes.

When shown around the compound by PAOCC officers earlier this month, the BBC found, in a deserted employee dormitory, training scripts on how to scam targets.

"I want to create my own financial empire," a scripted character – a female crypto expert at an international bank - says to her target, before flattering him and encouraging him to share his dreams. She is told to put her target on hold while pretending to "cash in on a trade" - only to declare, moments later, that she had made a killing. She then asks whether he himself knows how to trade, setting him up for the transfer of money that would soon follow.

This is just one of the many ways in which these compounds swindle billions of dollars around the world. Typically run by Chinese organised crime groups across South East Asia, they are staffed by a mixture of willing employees and trafficked victims who are forced to scam.

A notebook in which a worker has copied out the same phrase hundreds of times in Chinese

According to de la Paz, he and his colleagues found more than 300 foreign nationals in the Bamban compound, many of them working there against their will.

Punishments for disobedient or underperforming workers ranged from beatings to the banal: the BBC was shown a notebook from the compound, in which a worker had copied out the phrase, "I will meet my targets tomorrow", hundreds of times in Chinese.

Enclosed by walls topped with barbed wire, the workers' area of the compound was its own self-contained world, featuring a basketball court, supermarket and restaurants. Employees lived in rooms of six, each with a balcony equipped with a toilet and shower.

Their bosses meanwhile lived in a separate gated enclave, says de la Paz, who showed the BBC one of the villas there.

A marble-clad living room featured a high-end entertainment system, security monitor and ornate hardwood furniture. Behind the house was a swimming pool, beside which was a staircase that led down into what were supposedly escape tunnels, now flooded with water.

A view of the basketball courts from one of the dormitory blocks and...

the lavish interior of one of the villas

By the time security forces stormed the Bamban compound on the evening of 12 March 2024, some of these scam bosses had already eluded capture.

But the raid signalled a shift in the political climate.

In June 2022, just as Guo was being sworn in as mayor, Rodrigo Duterte's presidential term had ended.

His successor, Ferdinand Marcos Jr, soon began facing calls for a ban on Pogo businesses. Many across Philippine society sounded the alarm about the criminality that often lurked within, despite the millions they brought in as revenue. Their biggest customers were rich Chinese, which led to concerns about foreign influence as Marcos, unlike his predecessor, courted Washington over Beijing.

When the raid in Bamban happened, it exposed a dark underbelly of the Philippines – and the two worlds of Alice Guo – the pink office from where she had sought a political career and the scam compound, which suggested far murkier ambitions – collapsed in on one another.

'Amnesia girl'

Guo had been a relatively unknown name in the Philippines until last May when she was called to appear before the Senate to explain her links to the scam compound.

Almost overnight, she became a meme. When she told senators she had grown up on a family farm, it brought swift ridicule from Filipinos who said she was too glamorous for the countryside. She became notorious for her inconsistent, vague comments, as well as her claims to have forgotten basic details of her early life, leading social media to nickname her "my amnesia girl".

Guo said she'd had a secluded childhood as the child of a Chinese father and Filipino mother – but could not remember where in the Philippines her family home had been.

At one point, a senator said to her: "Please mayor, a little more candour than you have shown so far in answering some of the important questions."

She told sceptical senators that she had sold her stake in the land before becoming mayor, and that the issuance of a business permit to Zun Yuan had been a mere administrative measure.

Suspicion mounted when, during the hearings, a court in Singapore convicted two of Guo's Chinese former business partners in the Philippines of money-laundering.

Then, last July, despite the intense public interest in her case, Guo managed to slip through the travel restrictions imposed on her and escape to Indonesia. A few months later, she was re-arrested and returned to the Philippines.

Guo appeared several times before Senators to answer questions about her links to the scam compound

It was also in July that Philippine investigators made a breakthrough. Guo's fingerprints were found to match those on file for a girl from China named Guo Hua Ping, who had arrived in the Philippines alongside her mother, also Chinese, in the early 2000s.

This revelation sparked another line of inquiry in the Senate: the idea that Guo might be a spy, exercising influence or gathering intelligence for the Chinese state. The idea spread quickly among the watching public, dominating public discussion of the case.

Jaye Bekema - a senior officer on the staff of Risa Hontiveros, one of the senators who probed potential links between scam syndicates and Chinese intelligence - says the possibility that Guo was a spy warranted an investigation.

"I think there should be some clarity as to what a spy means," Ms Bekema said, while stressing that there is no conclusive proof of Guo being a spy.

"I am more likely to believe that she didn't plan to be a spy, but that she was tapped to be one [by the Chinese government] because of her criminal connections and her influence on local politics and the local government."

In many ways, Guo had become a victim of her own success. The career she chose and the limelight she worked hard to attract meant that she was fully exposed to public scrutiny when China-Philippines relations soured under Marcos.

As political rhetoric escalated and tensions between the two countries spiralled, not least of all in the South China Sea, the young mayor found herself in the crosshairs of espionage accusations.

Others, however, are more sceptical of the allegation. The Chinese state and Guo would have made strange bedfellows, according to Teresita Ang See, a civic leader in the Chinese-Filipino community.

"What can she spy on in a place like [Bamban]? It's in central Luzon, it's not near any of the sensitive establishments. Why use her? She's very visible, she flaunts her lifestyle. The last person you would use as a spy would be a person like Alice Guo," says Ang See.

The Pogo problem

But those who led the questioning against Guo, such as Senator Sherwin Gatchalian, say that it's more complicated than that.

"Transnational criminals working around the region know how to tap into... I'll call it local talent to penetrate our society, whether through politics or business," he explains.

Either way, Guo's case shed light on the Philippine state's vulnerability to being corrupted and co-opted by criminal groups abusing Pogo licences.

Bamban is festooned with campaign posters for the upcoming municipal elections

In mid-2024, President Marcos declared a blanket ban on all Pogos, citing their widespread abuse by organised crime.

Gatchalian says that the investigation into Alice Guo helped drive this change.

"Because of it, there was a groundswell of people really clamouring for a ban," he tells the BBC. "And that's when the president officially banned Pogos."

Since then, Philippine police have raided scores of scam hubs across the country. But given how influential the syndicates have become, there are concerns that leaks within the security forces and government institutions are allowing criminals to evade capture, according to Mr de la Paz.

Ms Bekema says she feels certain that some candidates in the upcoming national elections are still being financed with Pogo money, while Ang See says that serving police officers have been found working for the criminal syndicates.

Fortunato Mejia ran for councillor in 2022 as a member of Guo's political party

In Bamban, concerns about state infiltration seem far from people's minds.

The streets are decked with brightly-coloured campaign posters for the upcoming municipal elections. The Municipal Hall has been whitewashed, and the flowers have been removed.

Guo is currently on trial in six separate cases, potentially facing decades in prison, and has been barred from running for public office again. She has pleaded not guilty to human trafficking charges.

Yet many still treasure the memory of their embattled ex-mayor.

One of those currently standing for Bamban councillor is Miah Mejia's father, Fortunato, a garrulous 69-year-old, who also ran in 2022 as a member of Alice's party, although he lost. He even featured in one of her publicity videos at the time.

He says that the people of Bamban had taken a chance by electing Guo, but that she had good connections to Chinese investors and had delivered on all her promises to the townspeople.

He is also indifferent to the Senate's evidence that Guo was not a Filipino.

"That's what they've been showing, but we still don't believe it because we don't care whether she's Filipino or not," he says. "What's important is whether or not she helps us."

Mr Mejia is adamant that the Alice Guo he knew would not have been involved in human trafficking.

"Never, ever would she do something like that," he says, flatly. "I know she has a heart. She fears the Lord."

Additional reporting by Harry Atteshlis and Jay Behrouzi

Who is Alice Guo? Listen to the radio documentary on Assignment here