WHITE PLAINS, N.Y.—U.S. District Judge Nelson S. Roman on Sept. 26 sentenced one of the conspirators who helped advance Beijing’s transnational repression campaign in the United States to 16 months in prison.
Lin Feng, a 44-year-old Green Card holder based in California, pleaded guilty in July to acting as an unregistered agent of the Chinese communist regime and bribing an IRS agent in connection with a plot to target Falun Gong practitioners based in the United States.
Lin had worked alongside U.S. citizen John Chen, 70, under the direction of a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) official to revoke the nonprofit status of New York-based Shen Yun Performing Arts. The two had attempted to bribe the IRS with $50,000 to achieve the goal.
Shen Yun Performing Arts is a music and dance company that aims to revive traditional Chinese culture with its performances. Shen Yun also highlights human rights abuses by the Chinese communist regime, including the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. Falun Gong is a meditation practice that has faced heavy persecution by the CCP since 1999.
At the sentencing hearing, Lin expressed remorse and distanced himself from Chen, a local Chinese community leader who is alleged to have repeatedly communicated with a Chinese official during the repression campaign.
“I’m sorry about this conduct,” Lin said at Thursday’s hearing at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. “No matter whether it was conscious or unconscious, wrong is wrong.”
The 16-month prison term equals the amount of time Lin has spent in detention since his arrest in May 2023. He will be subject to three years of supervised release once out of federal custody. He will also forfeit $50,000, the value of the bribe.
Chen had tried to bribe a Treasury Department law enforcement officer he had believed to be an IRS agent to advance a defective whistleblower complaint.
Lin and Chen attempted to “manipulate the IRS Whistleblower Program, through bribery and deceit,” in an attempt to strip Shen Yun Performing Arts, which is run and maintained by Falun Gong practitioners, of its tax-exempt status, according to court filings.
The information they submitted to the IRS was “facially deficient and contains rhetoric similar to the propaganda that the PRC [People’s Republic of China] Government uses to justify its subjugation and harassment of Falun Gong members,” according to court documents.
Damian Williams, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, noted in a Sept. 19 sentencing memo that the Chinese communist regime considers Falun Gong practitioners to be “one of the top five threats to its rule,” and as a result, they face “a range of repressive and punitive measures.”
Chen and Lin’s conduct was part of the repression to “harass, intimidate, disrupt, and otherwise repress practitioners of Falun Gong,” he said.
“Efforts such as this to repress free speech by targeting critics of the PRC in the United States will not be tolerated. This Office remains committed to thwarting malicious transnational repression attempts by foreign influences on American soil,” Williams said in a July 25 statement.
Lin reached a plea deal with U.S. prosecutors in July. At the plea hearing, he described Chen as his “boss,” saying that they had discussed the plan together and that he had helped facilitate a May meeting between Chen and the purported IRS official, although he didn’t participate in the conversation.
“While we worked together, I found that Chen works for important figures in the Chinese government and businesses,” Lin said, adding that he was sometimes looped into the conversations between Chen and people based in China who expressed a desire to “harm Falun Gong.”
He acknowledged having paid $4,000 in cash to the undercover agent at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport.
The money was part of a down payment promised to the agent for helping move the complaint forward.
Chen had told the undercover agent, who already received $1,000, that Lin would make two more trips to New York to deliver two additional cash payments of $25,000, according to the Sept. 19 sentencing memo.
Chen said that the Chinese leadership was “very generous,” according to court filings.
Prosecutors on Sept. 26 emphasized the seriousness of Lin’s conduct before the judge announced sentencing, describing Lin as the “right-hand man” in an “outrageous scheme” at the “behest of CCP.”
The sentencing took place around the time that the Justice Department secured a string of convictions and guilty pleas in prosecuting Chinese agents.
From The Epoch Times