Chinese man sentenced to 20 months for Falun Gong harassment in U.S.

A 71-year-old Chinese man was sentenced to 20 months in prison on Tuesday for taking part in a plot targeting the Falun Gong spiritual movement in the United States.

John Chen, of Los Angeles, was convicted of acting as an unregistered agent of the Chinese government and bribing a tax authority agent.

Chen and another Chinese national, Lin Feng, 44, who also lived in Los Angeles, took part in a Chinese government campaign to "repress and harass Falun Gong practitioners" in the United States, the Justice Department said in a statement.

In 2023, Chen and Feng sought to have the Internal Revenue Service strip the tax-exempt status of the Shen Yun Performing Arts Center, which is run by the Falun Gong.

As part of the scheme, they paid a $5,000 cash bribe to a purported IRS agent who was in fact an undercover officer.

In addition to 20 months in prison, Chen was sentenced to three years of supervised release and ordered to forfeit $50,000.

Feng was sentenced in September to time-served of 16 months in prison.

The Falun Gong movement is banned in China and prosecuted by authorities there.