情报员：大纪元时报背后的骗局

 情报员：大纪元时报背后的骗局

2024年6月7日，美国在线新闻网站“情报员”报道《神秘大纪元核心的骗局》称，大纪元财务总监关卫东将于6月21日出庭受审。关卫东3日在纽约被捕，他被控洗钱6700万。

报道称，邪教法轮功的大纪元媒体集团靠支持特朗普、散布阴谋论、抹黑中国，获取流量、吸引读者。2019年，随着特朗普连任竞选的升温，大纪元加大了对特朗普的正面报道力度（编者注：花费150万美元购买广告）。该报最终因试图掩盖其支持特朗普的广告购买，而被 Facebook封禁，但赌注得到了回报。如今，大纪元在保守派媒体格局中根深蒂固，尤其是其健康报道。

曾经一名大纪元摄影师进入白宫的禁区，递给特朗普一个没有标记的文件夹。这个违反禁令的举动，导致该报记者被逐出白宫。

法轮功极力掩盖洗钱犯罪

税务记录显示扩张策略是成功的。该报纸背后的非营利组织大纪元时报协会在2020年获得了7000万美元的收入，比前9年的收入总和增加了数千万美元。当银行询问资金流入激增的情况时，首席财务官关卫东表示，资金流入来自“在线捐款”的增加。

大纪元时报2016年大选数字团队的政治记者史蒂文·克莱特 (Steven Klett) 表示：“我一直以为有某种类型的承保捐助者，但管理层从未真正让我们了解这一点。”“如果我们提起这件事，他们会非常谨慎。”

法轮功洗钱案是一个“愚蠢的骗局”

根据起诉书，关和他的团队据称在2020年初购买了数万张预付借记卡，这些借记卡中装满了“通过各种欺诈”获得的非法资金。检察官没有详细说明这些不义之财的来源，但确实声称关以欺诈手段洗钱，获得了“失业保险福利”，这表明洗钱与疫情第一年猖獗的失业欺诈有关。

这个计划并不复杂；预付卡通常被加密货币诈骗者使用。检察官表示，银行很快就标记了 Make Money 团队的交易。2020年6月，一家银行将大纪元的收入激增标记为可疑。这时关先生回答说这只是“网络捐款”，而且恰好没有发票。2020年12月，第二家银行将资金增加标记为可疑；关通过电子邮件回复说，该公司只是“从我们的支持者那里得到了越来越多的捐款，因为越来越多的人喜欢我们的媒体。”当月，关还被一家预付借记公司直接警告称，他们的所有转账都是通过“被盗/欺诈资金进行的，这让我们相信这些都是洗钱企图”。

前证券交易委员会官员约翰·里德·斯塔克表示，这些计划不可避免地会引起联邦政府的关注。“任何时候你使用带有其他匿名技术的预付借记卡，你都会引起反洗钱的担忧，”他说。检察官声称，从大纪元协会的税务文件中可以看出涉嫌诈骗的规模。 2020 年是辉煌的一年——关卫东据称开始了洗钱活动——之后，《大纪元时报》在接下来的两年中每年赚取超过 1.2 亿美元。检察官表示，涉嫌的诈骗行为一直持续到上个月关卫东被起诉为止。

6月3日逮捕事件公布数小时后，大纪元宣布关将被停职，“直到问题得到解决”。他的下一次出庭定于 6 月 21 日。

在审判期间，像克莱特这样的前雇员希望能够了解更多有关该报的国际业务及其与法轮功神韵艺术团关联的信息。克莱特说。“根据我的经验，我期待更多与人口贩卖和劳动力剥削有关的事情。”在之前的采访中，克莱特曾声称《大纪元时报》以旅游签证雇用法轮功信徒；然后，他们一起住在新泽西州的一栋大楼里（编者：法轮功老巢龙泉寺），每周工作六天，工作时间很长，而且没有工资。根据八年前他在那里看到的情况，克莱特将本周的指控描述为“平淡无奇”。

“这真是一个愚蠢的骗局，”他说。“它（编者注：法轮功）留下了大量的书面记录。为什么你会认为你一开始就能逃脱惩罚？”

英文报道

The Scam at the Heart of the Mysterious Epoch Times

JUNE 7, 2024

By Matt Stieb, Intelligencer staff writer

Five years ago, a niche newspaper called The Epoch Times made a big bet on Donald Trump. The outlet, associated with the exiled Chinese spiritual movement Falun Gong, never gained too many readers by handing out its free broadside condemning the policies of the Chinese Communist Party. But when Trump came into office, its editors found a hitmaker: pro-Trump stories and conspiracist clickbait. In 2019, as his reelection campaign warmed up, The Epoch Times increased its efforts to cover Trump favorably. It also extended its ad budget, spending more on pro-Trump advertising on Facebook than any group except the campaign itself.

The paper was eventually banned from Facebook for trying to obscure its pro-Trump ad buys, but the bet paid off. The Epoch Times was scoring interviews with Cabinet members. Former Trump advisers such as Steve Bannon were teaming up with its parent media company for documentary projects. In one suspicious instance, an Epoch Times photographer got into a restricted area in the White House and handed Trump an unmarked folder; the matter was never fully explained by the administration except for a statement saying it had been “dealt with.” In 2020, Trump’s press secretary invited The Epoch Times into the White House press-briefing room. As the pandemic raged, the paper leaned into the opportunity to distribute viral misinformation, calling COVID the “CCP virus.” Today, it is entrenched in the conservative media landscape, particularly for its health coverage. Last week, a Republican senator published an Epoch Times op-ed on the pandemic response. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said last year that he is a daily reader.

Tax records showed the expansion strategy was successful. The Epoch Times Association, the nonprofit behind the paper, pulled in $70 million in revenue in 2020 — tens of millions more than in the nine previous years combined. When banks asked about the surge in money coming in, the chief financial officer, Weidong “Bill” Guan, said the influx came from an increase in “online donations.”

“I always assumed there was some type of underwritten donor, but the management never really let us into that side of it,” says Steven Klett, a politics reporter on the paper’s digital team for the 2016 election. “They were very cagey if we ever brought it up.”

This week, the Justice Department suggested the growth in 2020 had been fueled by another source of revenue: On Monday, federal prosecutors in Manhattan charged Guan with bank fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering for allegedly running a yearslong scheme to launder at least $67 million in illegally acquired cryptocurrency through the company.

Little is known about Guan, a 61-year-old executive living in a modest New Jersey duplex, who was arrested on Sunday morning and pleaded not guilty. (Through a federal public defender, he has declined requests for comment.) But prosecutors say Guan ran a money-laundering operation out of one of the newspaper’s foreign offices. He was direct with his goals, calling the alleged fraud the “Make Money Online” team.

In early 2020, Guan and his team allegedly bought tens of thousands of prepaid debit cards that were loaded with illegal funds obtained “through various frauds,” according to the indictment. Prosecutors provided little detail on the origins of the ill-gotten cash but did allege that Guan had laundered fraudulently obtained “unemployment-insurance benefits” — suggesting a laundering connection to the rampant unemployment fraud in the first pandemic year. After obtaining the funds, Make Money Online allegedly cashed out on a crypto exchange for 70 to 80 cents on the dollar, then placed the clean funds in bank accounts associated with The Epoch Times.

The plan was not complicated; prepaid cards are commonly used by crypto scammers. And soon enough, prosecutors say, banks were flagging the Make Money team’s transactions. In June 2020, one bank marked The Epoch Times’ surge in income as suspicious. This was when Guan replied that it was just “online donations” for which it happened not to have an invoice. In December 2020, a second bank flagged the increase in funds as suspicious; Guan replied by email that the company was simply getting “more and more donations from our supporters because more and more people like our media.” That month, Guan was also warned outright by a prepaid-debit company that all their transfers had been made with “stolen/fraudulent funds, which leads us to believe these are all money-laundering attempts.”

According to former Securities and Exchange Commission official John Reed Stark, these schemes inevitably attract federal attention. “Any time you’re using a prepaid debit card with other anonymizing techniques, you’re going to raise anti-money-laundering concerns,” he said. Prosecutors claim the scale of the alleged scam can be seen in The Epoch Times Association’s tax documents. After the banner year in 2020 — when Guan allegedly began his laundering operation — The Epoch Times raked in over $120 million for each of the next two years. Prosecutors say the alleged scam was ongoing until last month when Guan was indicted.

Hours after the arrest was made public on Monday, The Epoch Times announced that Guan would be suspended “until the matter is resolved.” His next appearance in court is scheduled for June 21. During the trial, former employees like Klett hope more information will come out about the newspaper’s international operations and its connections to the secretive Falun Gong movement — and its dance company, Shen Yun — which are run out of a complex south of the Catskills. “It leaves more questions than answers somewhat,” Klett says. “I was expecting something more to do with human trafficking and labor exploitation, just based on my experience.” In previous interviews, Klett has claimed The Epoch Times employed Falun Gong followers on tourist visas; they then lived together in a complex in New Jersey and worked long hours, six days a week, without pay — allegations the paper has denied. Based on what he saw there eight years ago, Klett described the charges this week as “pedestrian.”

“This is a really stupid scam,” he says. “It leaves a massive paper trail. And why you would think you would get away with that to begin with? I don’t quite get it.”

网址：

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/inside-bill-guans-alleged-laundering-at-the-epoch-times.html