Two suspects arrested in Beijing-directed targeting of Falun Gong in the US

Chinese Americans demonstrate against the Peoples Republic of China.

A federal court in the Southern District of New York Friday, May 26, unsealed a complaint charging two California men with acting and conspiring to act as unregistered agents of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), conspiring to bribe and bribing a government official, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

According to the complaint, John Chen, aka Chen Jun, 70, a Los Angeles resident and former citizen of the PRC, and Lin Feng, a Los Angeles resident and PRC citizen, allegedly participated in a PRC government-directed scheme targeting US-based practitioners of Falun Gong — a spiritual practice banned in the PRC. 

As the contents of the complaint were being revealed in New York, the two suspects were arrested the same day in Los Angeles.

“The Chinese government has yet again attempted, and failed, to target critics of the PRC here in the United States,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland at the press event. Their intended target were the US followers of Falun Gong.

Falun Gong, based broadly around meditation, was banned by China in 1999 after 10,000 members appeared at the central leadership compound in Beijing in silent protest. The group has called for people to renounce the ruling Chinese Communist Party.

The PRC government has designated the Falun Gong as one of the “five poisons,” or one of the top five threats to its rule. In China, Falun Gong adherents face a range of repressive and punitive measures from the PRC government, including imprisonment and torture.

 “We allege the defendants in this case attempted to bribe someone they thought was an IRS agent in order to further the Chinese government’s campaign of transnational repression in the United States. But the individual they attempted to bribe was in fact an undercover law enforcement agent, and both defendants were arrested this morning (May 26). 

“The Department of Justice continues to expose the Chinese government’s brazen attempts to perpetrate transnational repression, this time through attempted bribery,” said Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco. “As highlighted by today’s arrests and charges of conspiracy, bribery, and money laundering, we will not tolerate efforts by the PRC or any foreign government to intimidate, harass, or undermine the rights and freedoms enjoyed by all who live in the United States.”

“China’s government has once again shown its disregard for the rule of law and international norms,” said FBI Director Christopher Wray. “The FBI will not tolerate CCP repression — its efforts to threaten, harass, and intimidate people — here in the United States. We will continue to confront the Chinese government’s efforts to violate our laws and repress the rights and freedoms of people in our country.”

“John Chen and Lin Feng allegedly waged a campaign at the behest of the Government of the People’s Republic of China to influence a U.S. Government official in order to further the PRC Government’s repression of practitioners of Falun Gong,” said U.S. Attorney Damian Williams for the Southern District of New York. “Efforts to manipulate and use the arms of the U.S. Government to carry out the PRC Government’s autocratic aims are as shocking as they are insidious. My office will work vigorously to protect against malign foreign influences.”

The complaint alleges that from at least approximately January 2023 to May 2023, at the direction of the PRC government,via an identified PRC government official (PRC Official-1), tChen and Feng worked too further the PRC government’s campaign to repress and harass Falun Gong practitioners in the US. 

As part of the PRC government’s campaign against the Falun Gong, Chen and Feng allegedly engaged in a scheme to manipulate the IRS’s Whistleblower Program in an effort to strip the tax-exempt status of an entity run and maintained by Falun Gong practitioners (Entity-1). 

After Chen filed a defective whistleblower complaint with the IRS (the Chen Whistleblower Complaint), Chen and Feng paid $5,000 in cash bribes, and promised to pay substantially more, to an undercover agents posing as an IRS agent,

Neither Chen nor Feng notified the Attorney General that they were acting as agents of the PRC government in the United States which they would be required to do.

In the course of the scheme, Chen, on a recorded call, explicitly noted that the purpose of paying these bribes, which were directed and funded by the PRC government, was to carry out the PRC government’s aim of “toppl[ing] . . . the Falun Gong.” 

During a call intercepted pursuant to a judicially authorized wiretap, Chen and Feng discussed receiving “direction” on the bribery scheme from PRC Official-1, deleting instructions received from PRC Official-1 in order to evade detection, and “alert[ing]” and “sound[ing] the alarm” to PRC Official-1 if Chen and Feng’s meetings to bribe Agent-1 did not go as planned. 

Chen and Feng also discussed that PRC Official-1 was the PRC Government official “in charge” of the bribery scheme targeting the Falun Gong.

As part of this scheme, Chen and Feng allegedly met with the undercover agent in Newburgh, New York, on May 14. During the meeting, Chen gave the fake IRS official a $1,000 cash bribe as an initial, partial bribe payment. Chen further offered to pay the undercover agent a total of $50,000 for opening an audit of Entity-1, as well as 60% of any whistleblower award from the IRS if the Chen Whistleblower Complaint were successful. 

On May 18, Feng paid the undercover agent posting as an IRS employee a $4,000 cash bribe at John F. Kennedy International Airport as an additional partial bribe payment in furtherance of the scheme. Chen allegedly obtained funding from the PRC government to make bribe payments during his trips to the PRC in the course of the scheme.

Chen and Feng are each charged with:

1. one count of conspiring to act as an agent of a foreign government without notifying the Attorney General and to bribe a public official, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison;
2. one count of acting as an agent of a foreign government without notifying the Attorney General, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison; 
3. one count of bribing a public official, which carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison; and (4) one count of conspiring to commit international money laundering, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

The arrests of the two suspected foreign agents in California is the latest in a focus of on suspected PRC agents in the US who have been engaged in alleged activities against US residents. Last month federal authorities arrested two men in New York City who have been charged with harassing and threatening New York residents of Chinese descent. 

“No other nation poses as severe a threat to the democratic values of the United States as the government of the People’s Republic of China,” said FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate. “The FBI will not stand by as the PRC attempts to weaponize our institutions and programs and attack the rights of those on US soil. Any attempt to repress or harass individuals runs directly counter to the ideals our nation was founded upon, and it simply will not be tolerated.”

EDITOR'S NOTE: For additional commentary, news and views from an AANHPI perspective, follow @DioknoEd on Twitter or at his blog Views From the Edge.

Sunday Read: Facebook bans hundreds of fake accounts generated by Epoch Times

EPOCH TIMES

ASAM NEWS &
VIEWS FROM THE EDGE

Facebook Friday (Dec. 20) removed hundreds of accounts generated by the Epoch Times which included profile photos produced using artificial intelligence, reported the New York Times.

The newspaper, founded in 2000 by followers of the Falun Gong religious movement “as an antidote to communist propaganda,” has reportedly been spending millions of dollars to reach new readers with its pro-Donald Trump message.

The Epoch Times is backed by the Falun Gong and tied to disinformation campaigns with a pro-Trump bias.

“This was a large, brazen network that had multiple layers of fake accounts and automation that systematically posted content with two ideological focuses: support of Donald Trump and opposition to the Chinese government,” Graham Brookie, director of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, said to the New York Times.

NBC News described the publication as "straddling the line between an ultraconservative news outlet and a conspiracy warehouse." The newspaper dramatically expanded its U.S. coverage following the election of Donald Trump and has become one of Trump's most ardent defenders on social media, spending at least $1.5 million on pro-Trump advertisements in the first half of 2019. 

Shortly after NBC News published its report, Facebook announced that it had banned the Epoch Times from advertising on the platform.

It featured the fake news Trump likes to rail against except, of course, when it benefits him. The Epoch Media group denied to the New York Times that it is behind the accounts removed by Facebook and claimed Facebook did not contact it.

Examples of postings from the fake accounts.

The Epoch Media Group acknowledged some of its former employees are involved with the banned accounts, but said that is not evidence of a connection.

According to Fast Company, the Epoch Times strongly opposes the Chinese communist party with a decidedly strong pro-Trump bias.

In news articles, videos and social-media posts, however, the Epoch Times — along with video production company New Tang Dynasty, which is also owned by parent organization Epoch Media Group — has repeatedly promoted the QAnon conspiracy theory, whose adherents claim that Trump is leading a secret effort to uncover a global pedophile ring that includes many top Democrats, media figures and other members of the so-called "Deep State."

In August, NBC News reported the Epoch Times purchased 11,000 pro-Trump ads on Facebook at a cost of $1.5 million in six months. The ads spread conspiracy theories and criticized “fake news” media. Facebook banned the Epoch Times from advertising following the report.

Both the Epoch Times and the Shen Yun dance troupe make up the bulk of the outreach efforts of the Falon Gong. Shen Yun isn't just a dance show. It's also part of an elaborate messaging strategy for Falun Gong — also known as Falun Dafa — a Chinese religious and political group persecuted within China that opposes the country's ruling party. The Chinese government began to consider the group a threat in 1999 due to its large following.

Dancers are trained at the Fei Tan Academy of the Arts, which is part of a 427-acre refuge for Falun Gong adherents in upstate New York. Profits from Shen Yun shows go towards maintaining the academy. The dance companies also, unusually, have a mixture of paid and unpaid performers, according to Hazlitt.

Shen Yun has a wide reach. It's playing in 94 different American cities this year, and has dozens of other shows in Canada, Mexico, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand — but not, as you can imagine, China.
Shen Yun has resisted talking to media about the accusations, but social media is full of comments to indicate that dance entertainment is not the primary goal of the company. 

On Friday, fact-checking website Snopes reported that an affiliated organization called “The BL,” for “The Beauty of Life,” has recently been posting pro-Trump ads on Facebook. The Epoch Times denies that it is tied to The BL, however, Snopes reported that it’s largely run by former executives from the paper.

Facebook has come under criticism for choosing to continue to publish political advertising that might have false claims.  Other online companies such as Google and Twitter, have overhauled their political ads policies and severely limited campaigns’ ability to target voters — and Facebook is under mounting pressure to do the same.

The Verge reports that those fake accounts would post BL content in other Facebook groups while pretending to be Americans. Pro-Trump messages were often posted “at very high frequencies” and linked to off-platform sites belonging to the BL and The Epoch Times. The accounts and pages were managed by individuals in the US and Vietnam.

In an apparent shift from its policy, Facebook said that it removed 610 accounts, 89 Facebook pages, 156 groups, and 72 Instagram accounts that were connected to the organization. Around 55 million accounts followed one of these Facebook pages and 92,000 followed at least one of the Instagram accounts. The organization spent nearly $9.5 million in advertisements, according to Facebook.

The Epoch Times claimed, "NBC News and MSNBC content about us has been riddled with inaccuracies, blatant errors, and misrepresentations.

“We take advantage of different marketing platforms to grow our subscriber base, including Facebook," The Epoch Times said in a statement to its readers. "On Facebook, we use video ads to drive subscriptions. The Epoch Times’ subscription advertisements have no political agenda. The only reason some of them are run as ‘political advertising’ is that online platforms require them to be categorized as such.”

"The Epoch Times is an independently owned media and not owned or operated by Falun Gong, as we clarified in our statement to NBC News," concluded the Epoch statement.