July 26 (UPI) — Two people, including a Chinese national, have pleaded guilty to bribing an Internal Revenue Service agent as part of a Beijing-backed scheme targeting the U.S. tax-exempt status of a Communist Party opposition religious movement.
Falun Gong is a spiritual practice that has been banned in China since 1999 and its supporters are considered one of the so-called Five Poisons of the Communist Party along with the supporters of Uyghurs and Tibetans as well as those in favor of Chinese democracy and Taiwan independence.
John Chen, 71, a former citizen of China and a Chino, Calif., resident, and Lin Feng, 44, a Chinese citizen and a permanent resident of Los Angeles, were accused of executing this plan at the direction of a Chinese official starting in January of 2023 through to May of the same year.
Prosecutors said Chen was directed by the Chinese official to submit a false whistleblower report to the IRS seeking to revoke the tax-exempt status of a nonprofit organization run by Falun Gong practitioners.
The charging document describes the whistleblower complaint as “facially deficient and contains rhetoric similar to the propaganda that the PRC Government uses to justify its subjugation and harassment of Falun Gong members.”
The official name of China is the People’s Republic of China.
To forward the scheme, Chen and Feng contacted a purported IRS employee who was actually an undercover agent. The pair promised the agent up to $50,000 in cash and 60% of any whistleblower award to forward their complaint and have it succeed.
On May 14 of last year, Chen and Feng met with the agent in Newburgh, New York, and gave an initial cash bribe of $1,000, the charging document states.
Four days later, Feng paid the agent an additional cash bribe of $4,000 at John F. Kennedy International Airport, with Chen telling the agent in a recorded call that he will return from China with more bribe money, and that Feng would hand deliver the agent two $25,000 cash payments in New York.
The pair were arrested May 26 in the Central District of California and were charged in a four-count indictment.
They have both pleaded guilty to one count of acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government, which comes with a maximum 10-year sentence, and one count of bribing a public official, which has a maximum 15-year sentence.
Chen pled guilty Wednesday with Feng pleading guilty Thursday.
“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,” Damian Williams, the U.S attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement.
The announcement comes days after the U.S. State Department marked the 25 anniversary of China’s repression and abuse of Falun Gong practitioners, stating “the United States will continue to speak out for human rights, including freedom of religion or belief.”
According to the State Department’s report on international religious freedom for China, 188 Falun Gong adherents in the Asian country died as a result of persecution, 755 were imprisoned, 3,457 were arrested and 2,749 were harassed just during the year of 2023.
“We call upon the PRC to cease its repressive campaign and release all who have been imprisoned for their beliefs,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.