IN a piece of news this week that was unexpected but actually not that surprising in hindsight, the United States Department of Justice unsealed a sweeping indictment against Weidong "Bill" Guan, chief financial officer of the Epoch Times newspaper, and several of his colleagues, alleging that they laundered approximately $67 million in illegally obtained funds through the news platform's financial infrastructure. Most of the money, the indictment goes on to say, was stolen from Americans' unemployment benefits and various online scams between 2020 and 2024.
According to news reports from the Associated Press, NewYork Magazine and elsewhere, the federal indictment alleges that "Guan was in charge of an office within the Epoch Times organization called the 'Make Money Online' team, in which Guan and underlings 'used cryptocurrency to knowingly purchase tens of millions of dollars in crime proceeds.' The Make Money Online team, based outside the US, would allegedly purchase 'proceeds of fraudulently obtained unemployment insurance benefits' loaded onto prepaid debit cards. The team then allegedly traded them for cryptocurrency at 70 to 80 percent of the cards' actual value, transferring those funds into bank accounts associated with the Epoch Times, as well as into Guan's personal bank accounts."
The money-laundering scheme allegedly caused the Epoch Times' annual revenue to explode by 410 percent in 2020, from $15 million to $62 million. To conceal the origin of the funds, the indictment says, Guan and his co-conspirators made numerous false statements to financial institutions, claiming the money came from subscription revenue or donations.
The Epoch Times was founded about 20 years ago in New York by the Falun Gong religious cult, originally as a free propaganda newsletter to spread its views and counter the official news from the Chinese government. It might have found some useful credibility if it honestly pursued the latter aim, but it was the group's views that exposed it as a toxic and dangerous source of propaganda and, consequently, made it a favorite among the worst right-wing lunatics in the US and elsewhere.
Among other things, the Epoch Times is virulently opposed to liberal democracy (despite ostensibly being an anti-China newspaper), denies climate change, rejects homosexuality and feminism, and rejects modern medicine, along with other fringe right-wing positions. It was the source of most widespread conspiracy theories about Covid-19 and has helped disseminate those popular among the followers of convicted felon Donald Trump, such as claims that the 2020 US presidential election was "stolen." Steve Bannon, the violent former adviser to the aforementioned convicted felon (and who himself has just been ordered to prison to serve a long-delayed sentence for a contempt-of-Congress charge), has been a frequent contributor to the Epoch Times, and articles from the paper are routinely shared by Trumpist Sen. Ted Cruz on his official websites and social media feeds.
I am mildly curious — I emphasize mildly — what our resident climate change denialist has to say about the epic downfall of the Epoch Times, as it has been among his favorite sources of material to copy and paste in his lonely disinformation campaign. Particularly since I apparently got under his skin enough at one point for him to speak out in defense of this waste of paper, ink and bandwidth after I referred to it, not for the first time, as "the cult newsletter." As things have developed, I was apparently being kind. The revelation that the Epoch Times was less a news outlet than it was a massive criminal enterprise, something that seems to be revealed frequently about many far-right organizations and characters, certainly does make one wonder if others of the sources often used by Mr. "I'm going to pretend I never heard the term 'copyright infringement'" are even less reliable than they appear, which is not at all. These include such gems as Fox News, the National Review, Issues and Insights, and the various appendages of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and the RealClear Policy Foundation.
One could also wonder if the Epoch Times is actually a Chinese government operation, so effectively has it contaminated any effort to get "real," uncensored news from China. Although most of the operation's people are in the US (working out of a compound in upstate New York), the Falun Gong cult does represent an extensive web of contacts both inside and outside China, hypothetically be an effective news network. It's not and never has been, of course, but it does have some reach. Using that reach to spread outlandish conspiracy theories, easily disprovable claims, and its own sociopathically narcissistic ideology has drowned out smaller but more objective voices or, worse, made anything contrary to China message sound like a conspiracy theory or sensationalism.
Source Link: https://www.manilatimes.net/2024/06/09/opinion/columns/right-wing-news-outlet-exposed-as-massive-fraud-engine/1950557
