(Minghui.org) According to a press release issued by the U.S. Attorney’s Office on November 19, the Southern District of New York sentenced California resident John Chen to 20 months in prison for acting as an unregistered agent of the government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) related to the transnational repression against Falun Gong. Co-defendant, California resident Lin Feng, received a 16-month prison term on September 26, 2024.
In addition to the prison term, Chen, 71, of Chino, California, was sentenced to three years of probation and was ordered to pay $50,000.
John Chen (left) and Lin Feng (right) were arrested in May 2023. They pleaded guilty in July 2024.
According to Damian Williams, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Chen was sentenced because he bribed an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) agent in connection with a plot to target U.S.-based practitioners of Falun Gong, a spiritual practice banned in China. Chen pleaded guilty on July 24, 2024, before U.S. Magistrate Judge Andrew E. Krause and was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Nelson S. Román on November 19.
“John Chen aligned himself with the PRC government and its goals to harass and intimidate the Falun Gong, a long-standing target of PRC repression. In doing so, Chen boldly attempted to bribe an individual he believed to be an IRS agent to corrupt the administration of the U.S. tax code and pervert the IRS whistleblower program,” stated Williams during the press conference.
“This Office will not tolerate efforts like this to repress free speech by targeting critics of the PRC in the United States. Today’s sentence is a reminder that the U.S. justice system will hold accountable those who attempt to engage in malicious transnational repression on American soil,” Williams said.
In a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office on July 25, 2024, Williams described the case as part of “malicious transnational repression attempts by foreign influences on American soil.” He stated that efforts such as this to repress free speech by targeting critics of the PRC in the United States will not be tolerated.
Chen came from China and Feng, 44, is a Chinese citizen who lives in Los Angeles, California. According to court documents, from at least approximately January 2023 to May 2023, Chen and his co-defendant Feng worked inside the U.S. at the direction of the PRC Government, including an identified PRC Government official (PRC Official-1), to further the PRC Government’s campaign to repress and harass Falun Gong practitioners.
“In China, Falun Gong adherents face a range of repressive and punitive measures from the Chinese government, including imprisonment,” explained the press release in July.
As part of the PRC Government’s campaign against the Falun Gong, Chen and Feng engaged in a PRC Government-directed scheme to manipulate the IRS’s Whistleblower Program in an effort to strip the tax-exempt status of Shen Yun Performing Arts Center, an entity run and maintained by Falun Gong practitioners, stated the press release in November.
After Chen filed a defective whistleblower complaint with the IRS (the Chen Whistleblower Complaint), he and Feng paid $5,000 in cash bribes, and promised to pay substantially more, to a purported IRS agent who was, in fact, an undercover officer (Agent-1) in exchange for his assistance in advancing the complaint.
Neither Chen nor Feng notified the Attorney General that they were acting as agents of the PRC Government in the U.S.
In a recorded call, Chen 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 met with Agent-1 in Newburgh, New York, on May 14, 2023. During the meeting, Chen gave Agent-1 a $1,000 cash bribe as an initial, partial bribe payment.
Chen further offered to pay Agent-1 a total of $50,000 for opening an audit on the Shen Yun Performing Arts Center, as well as 60% of any whistleblower awards from the IRS if the Chen Whistleblower Complaint was successful. On May 18, 2023, Feng paid Agent-1 a $4,000 cash bribe at John F. Kennedy International Airport as an additional partial bribe payment to further advance the scheme.
Chen and Feng each pleaded guilty in July to one count of acting as an unregistered foreign government agent and one count of bribing a public official.
Former CIA Officer Sentenced for CCP-Related Espionage
Alexander Yuk Ching Ma, a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer, pleaded guilty in May this year to conspiring to gather and deliver national defense information to the PRC. He was sentenced on September 11, 2024, to serve ten years in federal prison, followed by five years of supervised release according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney's Office.
According to court documents, Ma worked for the CIA from 1982 until 1989. His elder brother also worked for the CIA from 1967 until 1983. As CIA officers, both men held Top Secret security clearances that granted them access to sensitive and classified CIA information, and both signed non-disclosure agreements.
As Ma admitted in the plea agreement, Ma was contacted by the PRC’s Shanghai State Security Bureau (SSSB) intelligence officers in March 2001, who asked Ma to arrange a meeting between his brother and the SSSB. Both Ma and his brother met with SSSB intelligence officers in a Hong Kong hotel room for three days. During the meetings, they provided the SSSB with a large volume of classified U.S. national defense information in return for $50,000 in cash. Ma and his brother also agreed to continue to assist the SSSB.
“This sentence demonstrates the dedication of the United States to protect itself from this type of betrayal and violation of trust,” FBI Honolulu Special Agent in Charge Steven Merrill stated in the press release. “Let it be a message to anyone else thinking of doing the same. No matter how long it takes, or how much time passes, you will be brought to justice.”
Chinese Engineer Sentenced to 8 Years for Working as a CCP Agent
Ji Chaoqun, a Chinese citizen, was convicted in September 2022, for acting illegally within the United States as an agent of the PRC. According to court documents, Ji worked at the direction of high-level intelligence officers in the Jiangsu Province Ministry of State Security, a provincial department of the Ministry of State Security for the PRC.
As a Chinese citizen residing in Chicago, Ji was tasked by Xu Yanjun, a Deputy Division Director within the Ministry of State Security, with providing an intelligence officer with biographical information on certain individuals for possible recruitment by the JSSD. These individuals included Chinese nationals who were working as engineers and scientists in the United States, some of whom worked for U.S. defense contractors.
In 2016, Ji enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserves under the Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest program, which authorized the U.S. Armed Forces to recruit certain legal aliens whose skills are considered vital to the national interest.
In 2018 Ji had also several meetings with an undercover law enforcement agent. During these meetings, Ji explained that with his military identification, he could visit and take photos of “Roosevelt-class” aircraft carriers. Ji also explained that once he obtained his U.S. citizenship and security clearance through the MAVNI program, he would seek a job at the CIA, FBI or NASA. Ji intended to perform cybersecurity work at one of those agencies so that he would have access to all their databases, including databases that contained scientific research.
Ji was sentenced on January 25, 2023, to eight years in prison. Xu was sentenced in November 2022 to 20 years in prison for targeting American aviation companies, recruiting employees to travel to China, and soliciting their proprietary information. He did all these on behalf of the government of the PRC. Xu was also the first Chinese government intelligence officer ever to be extradited to the United States to stand trial and sentenced in federal court.
In addition, former General Electric (GE) employee Xiaoqing Zheng was sentenced in January 2023 to two years in prison for conspiring to steal GE trade secrets, knowing or intending to benefit the PRC.
From these above cases, one can tell the U.S. government has taken actions against the CCP’s espionage activities as well as transnational repression. In fact, the CCP has recruited agents in the U.S., Australia, and other countries to push through the communism agenda to these countries and dominate the world.
The United States has helped China in many ways in history, but the CCP always considers the U.S. as the No. 1 enemy. As China has become the world’s second largest economy and the world’s largest manufacturing country, the CCP’s threat on the free world cannot be underestimated.
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