Wednesday, June 12, 2024 – Bill Guan, the chief financial officer at Epoch Times Media Company, headquartered in New York, was on June 3 indicted by the US Department of Justice (DoJ) for his engagement with $67 million in money laundering using cryptocurrency. 1
His participation in a scheme to launder nearly $67 million of illegal funds and secure them in bank accounts under the company name and related entities accused him of conspiring to commit money laundering and bank fraud. 1
However, the charges imposed on Guan may not be applicable for news operations at the media company.
Guan has controlled one of the entities of the Epoch Times “Make Money Online” team (MMO) located abroad to procure unemployed insurance benefits provided by the prepaid debit cards and more criminal activities within the period of in or about 2020 through in or about May 2024, according to the press release of the DoJ.
The MMO team, along with the rest of the participants, applied the stolen personal identification information to open accounts, starting from bank accounts to crypto accounts, when the crime proceeds were bought.
Once the crime proceeds exceeded those accounts, they were laundered to other accounts opened under the media company, Guan’s personal account, and his crypto account.
The internal financial accounting of Epoch highlighted the sudden increase in annual revenue, from nearly $15 million to $62 million.
When the banks asked about the increase in revenue, they were the donations for the company, was his answer.
“However, in 2022, GUAN wrote a letter addressed to a congressional office falsely stating “donations” constitute “an insignificant portion of the overall revenue” of the Media Company,” according to a press release. 2
- Epoch Times: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/chief-financial-officer-multinational-media-company-charged-participating-scheme[↩][↩]
- Epoch Times: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/chief-financial-officer-multinational-media-company-charged-participating-scheme[↩]
