UpdateLogging off: Chinese internet celebrity Guo Meimei jailed for five years for running illegal casinos

Chinese internet celebrity Guo Meimei and an associate, Zhao Xiaolai, were both jailed on Thursday after being convicted of  running an illegal casino by a Beijing court.

Guo – who first gained mainland notoriety in 2011 after falsely claiming to work for the state-backed Red Cross Society of China and openly flaunting her wealth and extravagant lifestyle on social media – was sentenced to five years in prison and fined 50,000 yuan (HK$61,000) at Dongcheng District Court. She had denied the charge.

 Zhao, who had admitted the charge, was jailed for two years and fined 20,000 yuan.

READ MORE: ‘I like to show off’: Chinese celebrity Guo Meimei confesses to prostitution, gambling charges on state TV

At the start of the one-day hearing Guo admitted taking part in illegal gambling and inviting people to play high-stakes poker at an apartment in Beijing, but denied she had been running an illegal casino.

Guo appeared in court dressed in a white blouse and black trousers, wearing glasses and without make-up and her hair tied behind her head – in stark contrast to her glamorous image in the past.

She agreed with many of the prosecution’s claims, including asking a group of people to play Texas Hold’em poker between March and July 2013.

The court was told she organised three different nights of gambling, involving the use of money totalling 2.1 million yuan (about HK$2.5 million), at an apartment complex in Chaoyang district.

Zhao had helped Guo collect money from poker players during the gambling nights using a point-of-sale computer terminal in the apartment, prosecutors said.