India, June 30 -- A Chinese billionaire who escaped Beijing, befriended Steve Bannon, rubbed shoulders with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, and reinvented himself as a crusader for democracy was sentenced Monday to 30 years in an American federal prison, not for challenging the Communist Party, but for systematically looting the very followers who believed in him.

Guo Wengui, once believed to be among China's wealthiest men, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres in Manhattan for a massive financial fraud that prosecutors said caused losses of over $1 billion to victims. The sentence was the final act of a rise-and-fall story that moved from the boardrooms of Beijing to a Central Park luxury penthouse to a federal courtroom, lea...