3 months ago
Weidong “Bill” Guan, the Chief Financial Officer of The Epoch Times, has been arrested and charged with orchestrating a $67 cardinal planetary wealth laundering scheme. Federal prosecutors allege that Guan, 61, led a analyzable cognition involving the usage of integer assets to acquisition crime proceeds, including fraudulently obtained unemployment benefits, which were past laundered done assorted slope and crypto accounts linked to The Epoch Times and Guan personally. The strategy reportedly caused the media company’s gross to surge from astir $15 cardinal to $62 cardinal betwixt 2019 and 2020. The indictment does not database the circumstantial integer assets allegedly utilized successful the charges.
As stated successful the indictment,
“From astatine slightest successful oregon astir 2020, done successful oregon astir May 2024, GUAN, portion moving arsenic the Chief Financial Officer of a multinational media institution headquartered successful New York, New York (the “Media Company”), conspired with others to enactment successful a sprawling, transnational strategy to launder astatine slightest astir $67 cardinal of illegally obtained funds to slope accounts successful the names of the Media Company and related entities.”
Guan, who managed the “Make Money Online” squad astatine The Epoch Times, allegedly utilized stolen idiosyncratic accusation to unfastened accounts and transportation illicit funds. When questioned by banks astir the influx of transactions, Guan is accused of lying, claiming the funds were morganatic donations. As US Attorney Damian Williams said,
“When banks raised questions astir the funds, Guan allegedly lied repeatedly and falsely claimed that the funds came from morganatic donations to the media company.”
In 2022, helium falsely stated successful a missive to a legislature bureau that “donations represent ‘an insignificant information of the wide revenue’ of the Media Company.”
The Epoch Times, a blimpish media enactment linked to the Falun Gong spiritual movement, has stated its committedness to cooperating afloat with the probe and has suspended Guan pending the solution of the matter. The charges against Guan bash not pertain to the company’s journalistic activities.
If convicted, Guan faces a maximum condemnation of 20 years for wealth laundering and 30 years for each slope fraud charge. He pleaded not blameworthy and was granted a $3 cardinal idiosyncratic recognizance enslaved with question restrictions confined to parts of New York and New Jersey.
The station Epoch Times CFO charged successful multi-million dollar crypto laundering plot appeared archetypal connected CryptoSlate.
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