The main monetary officer of conservative world information outlet The Epoch Situations has been arrested and billed with foremost a yearslong plan to launder at the very least $67 million in illicit funds, federal prosecutors said Monday.
The plan — which concerned cryptocurrency, tens of thousands of pay as you go debit cards, fraudulently attained unemployment insurance policy positive aspects and stolen personalized data — fueled a huge improve in The Epoch Times’ claimed once-a-year profits, prosecutors alleged.
Weidong “Bill” Guan, 61, is billed in U.S. District Court in reduce Manhattan with just one depend of conspiracy to commit money laundering and two counts of lender fraud.
Guan was arrested Sunday morning, and pleaded not responsible on Monday afternoon before a federal justice of the peace judge in Manhattan, in accordance to a court discover. He was produced on a $3 million personalized recognizance bond, and his vacation is restricted to elements of New York and New Jersey, among other restrictions.
Guan “conspired with others to reward himself, the media firm, and its affiliates by laundering tens of hundreds of thousands of pounds in fraudulently attained unemployment insurance coverage rewards and other criminal offense proceeds,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams claimed in a assertion.
“When banking companies elevated concerns about the cash, Guan allegedly lied consistently and falsely claimed that the money came from authentic donations to the media business,” Williams claimed.
The Epoch Occasions is not talked about by title in the indictment. But Guan is detailed as Epoch Times’ main economic officer on the nonprofit media firm’s most the latest tax return, filed in late 2023.
Prosecutors alleged the dollars laundering plan benefited “a multinational media enterprise headquartered in Manhattan, New York.” The Epoch Occasions is headquartered on West 28th Avenue in Manhattan.
Prosecutors allege the scheme by Guan and his co-conspirators triggered the company’s earnings to jump from “about $15 million to approximately $62 million” amongst 2019 and 2020.
In accordance to The Epoch Times’ publicly readily available IRS nonprofit tax returns, in 2019 the business noted plan income of $15.5 million. The pursuing calendar year, The Epoch Moments claimed tax-exempt earnings of $62.7 million.
The Epoch Times did not promptly react to CNBC’s ask for for remark.
Guan, a resident of Secaucus, New Jersey, managed the Epoch Times’ “Make Funds On line group,” which carried out the plan to get “criminal offense proceeds” and transfer them to lender accounts joined to the media outlet, in accordance to his indictment.
From 2020 to 2024, the workforce allegedly applied a crypto system to purchase tens of tens of millions of dollars in crime proceeds at discounted premiums, of 70 to 80 cents on the dollar, in exchange for cryptocurrency. The criminal offense proceeds, which came from resources like “fraudulently attained unemployment insurance coverage rewards,” had been loaded on to tens of countless numbers of prepaid debit playing cards, prosecutors alleged.
Soon after getting the crime proceeds, members allegedly employed stolen individually identifiable facts to open up several kinds of accounts and transfer the proceeds into financial institution accounts connected with the media outlet and linked entities.
They had been frequently laundered all over again by other accounts, which include Guan’s individual personalized lender and crypto accounts, in accordance to prosecutors.
To hide the illegal nature of the proceeds, Guan and his co-conspirators allegedly lied to banking companies and other entities about their resources.
An lawyer for Guan could not straight away be arrived at, but a situation docket showed late Monday that Guan had been appointed a public defender.
A spokesperson for the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s Business office declined to provide any additional remark on the indictment towards Guan, which was filed in late May and unsealed Monday.
The financial institution fraud counts each individual carry a highest sentence of 30 many years in jail, although the conspiracy holds a 20-yr most prison sentence. The charges against Guan “do not relate to the Media Firm’s newsgathering activities,” the Department of Justice observed in a push release.
NBC News and other retailers have described on The Epoch Times’ affiliation with the Chinese spiritual team Falun Gong, which in new many years has supported former President Donald Trump as an ally in its opposition to the country’s ruling Chinese Communist Occasion.