2 Chinese agents charged by DOJ for targeting Falun Gong in US.

It’s a shocking and insidious scheme. Federal prosecutors have charged two men with attempting to bribe a public official with tens of thousands of dollars in a scheme to help the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) “topple” the persecuted faith group Falun Gong. The action marks the first prosecution by U.S. authorities to deter the Chinese regime from targeting Falun Gong—a meditative practice featuring truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance—in the United States.

“Efforts to manipulate and use the arms of the U.S. Government to carry out the PRC Government’s autocratic aims are as shocking as they are insidious,” said U.S. Attorney Damian Williams in a statement announcing the charges.

John Chen, a 70-year-old U.S. citizen born in China, and Lin Feng, a Chinese citizen aged 43, attempted to “manipulate the IRS Whistleblower Program, through bribery and deceit,” in an attempt to strip a Falun Gong-run entity of its tax-exempt status, according to court filings unsealed on May 26.

Charges and Arrests

The two face charges of conspiracy, bribery, and money laundering. Chen was held without bond, and the U.S. Marshals Service will transport him to New York. Feng’s detention hearing was postponed until June 1. He will remain in custody until then, a spokesman for the United States Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles told The Epoch Times.

Chen’s lawyer declined to comment.

‘Blood Brothers’

From January to May, Chen and Feng worked under the direction of Chinese officials to engage in a bribery campaign, according to the DOJ. Discussing the plan in a recorded call around Jan. 21, Chen indicated his goal to achieve the Chinese regime’s aim to “topple” Falun Gong, noting that the Chinese “leadership” would be “very generous” in funding the illicit payments, according to the court document.

Over the course of the scheme, Chen also warned a contact, who introduced him to the purported tax official and was cooperating with the FBI, to keep the illicit payment plan discreet, according to the court document.

“If you say pay money, damn it, it’ll leave a trail along the way, and it’ll be troublesome,” Chen allegedly said.

The identity of the Chinese official remains sealed, but Chen, in an intercepted call while discussing the scheme, said the official is “the one that is always in charge of these matters,” the complaint said. The complaint noted that the repression efforts targeting Falun Gong are centralized from the “610 Office,” an extralegal body that for many years maintained a principal location in China’s northeastern megacity Tianjin.

“They are like blood brothers. We started this fight against [the founder of the Falun Gong] twenty, thirty years ago. They are always with us,” Chen allegedly said. He said “the money is from all of us,” which the FBI investigator believes refers to the Chinese authorities.

DOJ Indictments

The DOJ indictments also followed the arrest of two individuals allegedly running a secret police station in New York for Beijing. One of the men, according to the Justice Department, organized counter-protests in Washington to demonstrations from Falun Gong practitioners during Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s U.S. visit in 2015.

During another recorded call a week later, Chen emphasized that “after this-this-this thing is done,” according to the complaint, “reward for work will surely be given at that time.”

In early February, Chen and Feng submitted the whistleblower complaint to an IRS office in New Windsor, New York, which Chen would later claim to authorities to be for the benefit of the U.S. taxpayers, the court filing said. That complaint, which repeatedly used the regime’s defamatory language in describing Falun Gong, was “facially deficient,” stated the filing. It said that IRS personnel have advised to reject the complaint.

On May 14, the pair met with an undercover agent who posed as an IRS official in a restaurant, promising to pay a total of $50,000 to open an audit on the Falun Gong-related entity, the document said. In the backseat of the agent’s vehicle, Chen handed the agent a $1,000 cash bribe, in $100 bills, as an initial payment. The agent would receive 60 percent of the whistleblower award from the IRS if the whistleblower complaint was successful, Chen and Feng promised during the meeting around New York’s Newburgh.

On an intercepted call two days prior, the two mentioned how they would receive “direction” from a Chinese official to carry out the scheme through a China-based encrypted messaging app, delete the official’s instructions, and “alert” and “sound the alarm” to the Chinese official if the meeting failed to go as planned.

“It is very risky to bring money into the United States,” Chen said.