Fugitive Philippine Mayor in Trafficking, Spying Storm Arrested in Indonesia

The fugitive mayor of a small town in the Philippines who in July amid accusations of spying and links to criminal syndicates has been detained in Indonesia.

Guo was the Mayor of Bamban, a sleepy town in Tarlac province where she allegedly had interests in an online casino that also operated as a front for human trafficking and internet scams. She is believed to have left the Philippines by speedboat on or around July 14 after slipping past border checkpoints.

Guo was apprehended on Tuesday night in the Indonesian city of Tangerang, west of Jakarta, Philippine authorities said.

Photographs taken of her arrest show Guo wearing light pink pajamas and a white shirt. She is currently in custody in Indonesia and it s unclear whether she will be extradited to the Philippines.

Guo s case has gripped the nation since police raided the Bamban compound in March to find hundreds of trafficked workers, as well as luxury villas and a network of underground tunnels. They also found Guo’s car and documents showing the land on which the Philippine Offshore Gaming Operator (POGO) complex was built was partially owned by the mayor.

Investigations into Guo’s background provided further intrigue. She claimed to be a natural-born Philippine citizen, the “love child” of a Chinese father and a Filipina maid, who had grown up “hidden” and friendless on a pig farm until she decided to run for mayor in 2022.

All of her social media accounts were registered that year. Residents of Bamban say no one in the town knew her before that.

Investigators discovered that Guo’s birth certificate had been registered when she was 17 years old, and her fingerprints matched those of a Chinese national named Guo Hua Ping who entered the country as a teenager.

Guo’s wealth was inconsistent with that of a small-town mayor, and her bank accounts showed mysterious transactions to individuals and business entities in China.

All this that Guo is a Chinese asset, which she denied.

The case proved to be the final straw for the POGO industry, which was long criticized for links to organized crime. On July 23, just over a week after Guo’s disappearance, Philippine President Bongbong Marcos ordered the industry to be dismantled.

Marcos said on Facebook Wednesday that Guo’s arrest was a warning to those who attempt to evade justice.

Such is an exercise in futility. The arm of the law is long, and it will reach you, he wrote.

Marcos previously warned that “heads will roll” after learning of Guo’s flight from the country.