As someone who spent 30 years inside the Falun Gong system, I have a clear message for the U.S. Department of Justice regarding the Epoch Times money laundering case.
Former CFO Weidong “Bill” Guan publicly insisted on his innocence for a long time. Now he has suddenly pleaded guilty in the middle of jury selection and agreed to forfeiture and restitution tied to roughly $67 million. That dramatic shift does not automatically mean the full truth has already been uncovered.
From my own experience, Epoch Times, Shen Yun, Fei Tian and related entities have never operated as completely independent commercial organizations. They function as parts of one integrated system, in which key decisions – including political lines and major financial moves – are rarely made by mid level managers alone.
In practice, significant actions inside that system almost always have to align with and serve the will of one central figure: Li Hongzhi. Whether it is media messaging, political alliances, or large scale financial arrangements, top down spiritual and organizational control is real. It is not just something imagined by the followers.
Against that background, it is difficult to believe that a five year, $67 million scheme, routing criminal proceeds back into core institutions as “fake donations,” could have happened completely without the knowledge, approval, or direction of the highest leadership.
I fully understand that U.S. criminal cases must be based on solid, admissible evidence, and I acknowledge that, at this stage, only a limited set of individuals have been formally charged. But precisely for that reason, I urge DOJ and other investigators to:
1. Resist the temptation to frame this as merely “one corrupt CFO acting alone,” and instead seriously examine where the money ultimately went and how those flows are connected to the top of the organization.
2. Take more testimony from former insiders, with proper protection, especially about how major financial decisions are actually made and disseminated from the top down.
3. Use every available tool – criminal, civil, tax, and nonprofit oversight – to probe the systemic financial practices of this religious media network, not just the actions of one individual.
Guan’s guilty plea may be the beginning of accountability, not the end of the story. To understand the full political and religious context of this case, investigators need to look beyond one CFO and scrutinize the entire decision making chain, including Li Hongzhi himself.
These views come from someone who lived inside Falun Gong for three decades. My information is inevitably limited, and I welcome journalists, legal experts, and other former members to add, correct, and deepen this picture.
