Lin Feng, a 44-year-old California resident, was sentenced in federal court on Sept. 26 for acting as an agent of Communist China and participating in Beijing’s transnational repression against Falun Gong.
A U.S. permanent resident from China, Lin had worked together with another suspect, John Chen, in New York state to undermine Shen Yun Performing Arts, a company established by Falun Gong practitioners to promote traditional Chinese culture through classical dance.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual practice that is persecuted by the communist regime in mainland China.
In 2023, Lin and Chen contacted an undercover law enforcement officer of the U.S. Treasury Department whom they thought was an IRS worker. Working under the direction of a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) official, the two filed a whistleblower complaint about Shen Yun and attempted to bribe the “IRS” officer with $50,000 to revoke the company’s tax-exempt status as a nonprofit organization.
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The court notes that the complaint 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.”
U.S. District Judge Nelson S. Roman carried out the sentence at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in White Plains, N.Y. Lin received 16 months in prison.
Lin, who pled guilty to his charges in July, expressed remorse for his conduct, saying, “wrong is wrong.”
He also distanced himself from the 70-year-old John Chen, who is a Chinese local community leader in New York state.
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In addition to his prison sentence, which he has already served, Lin will also forfeit the value of the $50,000 bribe.
