On July 24 and July 25, 2024, respectively, in the Southern District of New York, John Chen, a U.S. citizen and Lin Feng, a People’s Republic of China (PRC) citizen, pleaded guilty to acting as unregistered agents of a foreign government and bribing a public official in connection with a plot to target U.S.-based practitioners of Falun Gong, a spiritual practice banned in the PRC.

According to a U.S. Department of Justice press release, from January 2023 to May 2023, Chen and Feng engaged in a scheme directed by the PRC government to manipulate the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) Whistleblower Program in an effort to strip the tax-exempt status of an entity run and maintained by Falun Gong practitioners.  After Chen filed a defective whistleblower complaint with the IRS, Chen and Feng paid $5,000 in cash bribes, and promised to pay substantially more, to a purported IRS agent who was an undercover officer, in exchange for assistance in advancing the whistleblower complaint.  During a meeting in Newburgh, New York, Chen gave the undercover officer a $1,000 cash bribe as an initial, partial bribe payment.  Chen further offered to pay the undercover officer a total of $50,000 for opening an audit on the entity run by Falun Gong practitioners, as well as 60 percent of any whistleblower award from the IRS if Chen’s whistleblower complaint was successful.  Furthermore, Feng paid the undercover officer a $4,000 cash bribe at John F. Kennedy International Airport as an additional partial bribe payment in furtherance of the scheme.    

Source: The facts in this case narrative come from the following publicly available documents, S.D.N.Y. Docket History; Crim. Compl. filed May 24, 2023; Indict. filed June 9, 2023; DOJ Press Release, published July 25, 2024