California Man Sentenced for Acting as an Illegal Agent of the People’s Republic of China Government and Bribery

John Chen, 71, of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Los Angeles, was sentenced today to 20 months in prison for acting as unregistered agents of the PRC and bribing an IRS agent in connection with a plot to target U.S.-based practitioners of Falun Gong — a spiritual practice banned in the PRC.

According to court documents, from at least approximately January 2023 to May 2023, Chen and co-defendant Lin Feng, 44, a PRC citizen and resident of Los Angeles, California, worked inside the United States 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. 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.

As part of the PRC's campaign against the Falun Gong, Chen and Feng engaged in a PRC government-directed scheme to manipulate the IRS’ Whistleblower Program in an effort to strip the tax-exempt status of an entity run and maintained by Falun Gong practitioners, the Shen Yun Performing Arts Center. 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 a purported IRS agent (Agent-1) who was, in fact, an undercover officer, in exchange for Agent-1’s assistance in advancing the complaint. Neither Chen nor Feng notified the Attorney General that they were acting as agents of the PRC in the United States.

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, 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 award from the IRS if the Chen Whistleblower Complaint were 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 in furtherance of the scheme.

Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams for the Southern District of New York, and Executive Assistant Director Robert R. Wells of the FBI’s National Security Branch made the announcement.

In addition to the prison term, Chen was sentenced to three years of supervised release and ordered to forfeit $50,000. Feng was sentenced on Sept. 26, to a time-served sentence of 16 months in prison.

The FBI and Office of the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration investigated the case.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Qais Ghafary, Michael D. Lockard, and Kathryn Wheelock for the Southern District of New York and Trial Attorney Christina Clark of the National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section prosecuted the case.