This 'Pig Butchering' Tale Stars a Mayor

Alice Guo was linked to a crime den in the Philippine town where she served

- FELIZ SOLOMON AND PATRICIA KOWSMANN

BAMBAN, Philippines-Hundreds of law-enforcement agents burst into a large walled enclave in the middle of this town 60 miles northwest of Manila. From the outside, it looked like an ordinary cluster of buildings-shops, offices, homes-but in fact, it was a crime den from which Chinese gangs ran scams called pig butchering, swindling U.S. citizens and others around the world out of millions of dollars.

The police hadn't warned anyone in local government, suspecting that most of them were in cahoots with the criminals. What they didn't know was that the town's popular young mayor, Alice Guo, would be accused of being a key architect of the brazen enterprise. Investigations later showed how she charmed her way to wealth and power and allegedly used that to open up her town of 78,000 people to thugs and thieves.

Philippine investigators said Guo, who they believe is 34 years old, owned the land on which the scam den was built, co-founded the firm that managed it and was complicit in the illegal activity it hosted. With her explicit support, they alleged, gangsters set up operations there for thousands of scammers to ensnare victims online.

The fraud is called pig butchering because scammers "fatten" up their targets by entangling them in romantic relationships online, convince them to invest in bogus financial schemes, then "butcher" them by disappearing with their money. U.S. officials said the scams often target elderly U.S. citizens and are difficult to monitor and trace.