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Epoch Times is involved in an alleged cryptocurrency money laundering scheme
The chief financial officer of the right-wing Epoch Times has been arrested and charged with laundering $67 million in criminal proceeds through the use of cryptocurrency, the Justice Department said. She said Monday.
Weidong Guan, 61, also known as Bill Guan, is charged with one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering and two counts of bank fraud between 2020 and 2024. U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement that Guan “conspired with others to take advantage.” , the media company and its affiliates.”
Federal prosecutors allege that in a “sprawling, transnational scheme,” Guan and others used cryptocurrency to purchase insurance proceeds fraud and other illegal means before moving them to various accounts associated with Epoch Times, contributing to an increase in the company’s revenue by approximately 410%. Guan claimed the increased revenue came from donations, the Justice Department said.
In a statement released Monday, the Epoch Times said it would cooperate with the investigation and would suspend Guan until the matter is resolved.
The operation was carried out by a department under Guan’s management called the “Make Money Online” team, investigators allege. The team is accused of using cryptocurrency to purchase proceeds of crime – including “fraudulently obtained unemployment benefits” – at 70 to 80 cents on the dollar.
The money was then deposited into bank accounts opened using stolen personally identifiable information and transferred to accounts associated with Guan and Epoch Times, according to the Department of Justice.
The Epoch Times was founded in 2000 by Chinese Americans in an effort to counter Chinese government propaganda. It has long denied ties to Falun Gong, a spiritual movement that has been banned by the Chinese Communist Party, but experts say the publication is sympathetic to the movement and has reflected Falun Gong’s political positions in its coverage of the Chinese government , The Washington Post did reported.
The Epoch Times has grown from a free newspaper in New York to a media company present throughout the Western world and Asia in languages including English and Chinese, although it is not banned in China.
In 2019 it was Advertising on Facebook is prohibited because of his pro-Trump ads that the social network said violated its rules on political advertising and transparency. The newspaper objected to the ban and said it ran a “very popular digital marketing campaign for our print newspaper subscriptions.”
A NBC News investigation that year he found that the channel had spent more than $1.5 million in six months to promote thousands of pro-Trump posts, the most of any organization besides Donald Trump’s official campaign. The Epoch Times said the report was “incorrect.”