In May 2023, “Bitter Winter” reported that Chinese agents in the United States had been
caught while trying to bribe an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) agent as part of a conspiracy against Falun Gong,
Damian Williams, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced on July 25 that John Chen and Lin Feng have entered guilty pleas to charges of operating as unregistered agents of the People’s Republic of China (“PRC”) government and offering bribes to an IRS official. This was in relation to a scheme to target U.S. practitioners. of Falun Gong. Chen’s plea was submitted before U.S. Magistrate Judge Andrew E. Krause, with sentencing scheduled for October 30, 2024, by U.S. District Judge Nelson S. Román. Feng entered her plea today before Judge Krause and is set to receive her sentence on October 31, 2024, also before Judge Román.
U.S. Attorney Damian Williams stated: “John Chen and Lin Feng brazenly attempted to bribe an undercover agent they believed to be an IRS agent here in the United States on behalf of the PRC Government in order to harass and intimidate the Falun Gong, a target of PRC repression. Efforts such as this to repress free speech by targeting critics of the PRC in the United States will not be tolerated. This Office remains committed to thwarting malicious transnational repression attempts by foreign influences on American soil.”
According to U.S. federal authorities, between roughly January 2023 and May 2023, Chen and Feng operated in the US on orders from PRC and a specific official (called in the documents “PRC Official-1”) to continue a campaign against Falun Gong.
In a campaign orchestrated by the PRC Government to undermine Falun Gong, Chen and Feng manipulated the IRS Whistleblower Program trying to revoke the tax-exempt status of a group associated with the spiritual movement. Following Chen’s submission of a flawed complaint to the IRS, they offered $5,000 and additional promised bribes to someone they thought was an IRS agent but was actually an undercover officer, seeking help to push the complaint forward.
Throughout the operation, Chen stated in a recorded conversation that the objective of these corrupt payments, which were directed and financed by the PRC Government, was to fulfill the PRC Government’s intention of “toppling . . . the Falun Gong.” In an exchange captured by a legally authorized wiretap, Chen and Feng were heard discussing instructions from PRC Official-1 regarding the bribery plan, the deletion of correspondences from PRC Official-1 to prevent detection, and the necessity to inform and alert PRC Official-1 if their attempts to corrupt Agent-1 weren’t successful. Moreover, Chen and Feng acknowledged that PRC Official-1 was the agent “in charge” of the PRC Government’s effort to undermine the Falun Gong through the scheme.
Under this plot, Chen and Feng encountered Agent-1 in Newburgh, New York, on May 14, 2023. During that encounter, Chen handed Agent-1 a $1,000 cash bribe as an initial, partial payment. Additionally, Chen proposed to give Agent-1 a total sum of $50,000 for initiating an audit on Falun Gong, plus 60% of any IRS whistleblower reward if the Chen Whistleblower Complaint succeeded. Later, on May 18, 2023, at John F. Kennedy International Airport, Feng gave Agent-1 another part of the bribe amounting to $4,000 cash.
Chen, aged 71 from Chino, California, and Feng, aged 44 from Los Angeles, California, both admitted to one charge of operating as an agent for a foreign government without registration, risking up to 10 years in prison, and one charge of offering bribes to a public official, which has a maximum penalty of 15 years in jail.
The incident confirms that the Chinese regime continues a campaign to harass Falun Gong and other religious minorities it considers “xie jiao,” or organizations propagating “heterodox teachings,” in foreign countries as well. These campaigns also use fellow travelers of China including anti-cultists and sympathetic journalists who attack Falun Gong as a “cult” and its successful theatrical company Shen Yun as a “cult front.”
Similar harassment campaigns have been conducted against Uyghur and Tibetan refugees and members of The Church of Almighty God. PRC embassies, agents, and fellow travelers (some paid, others in the position once known in communist jargon as “useful idiots”) also try to interfere in court cases where religion-based asylum requests by Chinese citizens are discussed by supplying false information to the courts. — Bitter Winter
