40 Officers of China’s National Police Charged in Transnational … – Department of Justice
Two criminal complaints filed by the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Eastern District of New York were unsealed today in federal court in Brooklyn charging 44 defendants with various crimes related to efforts by the national police of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) to harass Chinese nationals residing in the New York metropolitan area and elsewhere in the United States. The defendants, including 40 MPS officers and two officials in the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), allegedly perpetrated transnational repression schemes targeting U.S. residents whose political views and actions are disfavored by the PRC government, such as advocating for democracy in the PRC.
In the two schemes, the defendants created and used fake social media accounts to harass and intimidate PRC dissidents residing abroad and sought to suppress the dissidents free speech on the platform of a U.S. telecommunications company (Company-1). The defendants charged in these schemes are believed to reside in the PRC or elsewhere in Asia and remain at large.
These cases demonstrate the lengths the PRC government will go to silence and harass U.S. persons who exercise their fundamental rights to speak out against PRC oppression, including by unlawfully exploiting a U.S.-based technology company, said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Departments National Security Division. These actions violate our laws and are an affront to our democratic values and basic human rights.
Chinas Ministry of Public Security used operatives to target people of Chinese descent who had the courage to speak out against the Chinese Communist Party in one case by covertly spreading propaganda to undermine confidence in our democratic processes and, in another, by suppressing U.S. video conferencing users free speech, said Acting Assistant Director Kurt Ronnow of the FBI Counterintelligence Division. We arent going to tolerate CCP repression its efforts to threaten, harass, and intimidate people here in the United States. The FBI will continue to confront the Chinese governments efforts to violate our laws and repress the rights and freedoms of people in our country.
Disclosure: U.S. Attorney Breon Peace for the Eastern District of New York is recused from and has not participated in the case captioned United States v. Julien Jin et al., 20-mj-1103.
United States v. Yunpeng Bai, et al.
The two-count complaint charges 34 MPS officers with conspiracy to transmit interstate threats and conspiracy to commit interstate harassment. All the defendants are believed to reside in the PRC, and they remain at large.
As alleged, the officers worked with Beijings MPS bureau and are or were assigned to an elite task force called the 912 Special Project Working Group (the Group). The purpose of the Group is to target Chinese dissidents located throughout the world, including in the United States.
As alleged, the PRC government deploys its national police and the 912 Special Project Working Group not as an instrument to uphold the law and protect public safety, but rather as a troll farm that attacks persons in our country for exercising free speech in a manner that the PRC government finds disagreeable, and also spreads propaganda whose sole purpose is to sow divisions within the United States, said U.S. Attorney Breon Peace for the Eastern District of New York. I commend the investigative team for comprehensively revealing the insidiousness of a state-directed criminal scheme directed at residents of the United States.
The complaint alleges how members of the Group created thousands of fake online personas on social media sites, including Twitter, to target Chinese dissidents through online harassment and threats. These online personas also disseminated official PRC government propaganda and narratives to counter the pro-democracy speech of the Chinese dissidents. As alleged, for example, Group members created and maintained the fake social media accounts through temporary email addresses, posted official PRC government content, and interacted with other online users to avoid the appearance that the Group accounts were flooding a given social media platform. The Group tracks the performances of members in fulfilling their online responsibilities and rewards Group members who successfully operate multiple online personas without detection by the social media companies who host the platforms or by other users of the platforms.
The investigation also uncovered official MPS taskings to Group members to compose articles and videos based on certain themes targeting, for example, the activities of Chinese dissidents located abroad or the policies of the U.S. government.
As alleged, the defendants also attempted to recruit U.S. persons to act as unwitting agents of the PRC government by disseminating propaganda or narratives of the PRC government. On several occasions, the defendants used online personas to contact individuals assessed to be sympathetic and supportive of the PRC governments narratives and asked these individuals to disseminate Group content.
In addition, Group members took repeated affirmative actions to have Chinese dissidents and their meetings removed from the platform of Company-1. For example, Group members disrupted a dissidents efforts to commemorate the Tiananmen Square Massacre through a videoconference by posting threats against the participants through the platforms chat function. In another Company-1 videoconference on the topic of countering communism organized by a PRC dissident, Group members flooded the videoconference and drowned out the meeting with loud music and vulgar screams and threats directed at the pro-democracy participants.
United States v. Julien Jin, et al.
This amended complaint charges 10 individuals, including a former PRC-based Company-1 employee, six MPS officers, and two officials with the CAC, with conspiracy to commit interstate harassment and unlawful conspiracy to transfer means of identification. Nine of the defendants are believed to reside in the PRC and remain at large. The tenth defendant is believed to reside in Indonesia or the PRC and also remains at large.
The amended complaint charging a former PRC-based employee of a U.S. telecommunications company illustrates the insider threat faced by U.S. companies operating in the PRC, said First Assistant U.S. Attorney Pokorny for the Eastern District of New York, who thanked Company-1 for its cooperation in the governments investigation. As alleged, Julien Jin and his co-conspirators in the Ministry of Public Security and Cyberspace Administration of China weaponized the U.S. telecommunications company he worked for to intimidate and silence dissenters and enforce PRC law to the detriment of Chinese activists in New York, among other places, who had sought refuge in this country to peacefully express their pro-democracy views.
These cases demonstrate that the Chinese Communist Party, once again, attempted to intimidate, harass, and suppress Chinese dissidents in the United States, said Assistant Director in Charge David Sundberg of the FBI Washington Field Office. In the United States, the freedom of speech is a cornerstone of our democracy, and the FBI will work tirelessly to defend everyone's right to speak freely without fear of retribution from the CCP. These complex investigations revealed an MPS-wide effort to repress individuals by using the U.S. communications platform and fake social media accounts to censor political and religious speech.
In December 2020, the Department first announced charges against Julien Jin in connection with his efforts to disrupt a series of meetings on the Company-1 platform held in May and June 2020 commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre. Jin served as Company-1s primary liaison with PRC government law enforcement and intelligence services. In that capacity, he regularly responded to requests from the PRC government to terminate meetings and block users on Company-1s video communications platform.
As detailed in the original complaint, Jin and others conspired to use Company-1s U.S. systems to censor the political and religious speech of individuals located in the United States and elsewhere at the direction of the PRC government. For example, Jin and others disrupted meetings held on the Company-1 platform to discuss politically sensitive topics unacceptable to the PRC government including the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Jin and his co-conspirators fabricated evidence of purported misconduct to cause U.S.-based employees of Company-1 to terminate the meetings.
The allegations in the amended complaint reveal that Jin worked directly with and took orders from defendants at the MPS and the CAC to disrupt meetings on the Company-1 platform and that the co-defendants had targeted U.S.-based dissidents speech on Company-1s platform since 2018.
Starting in 2018, Jin and his co-defendants repeatedly sought to terminate video chat meetings organized by a Chinese dissident residing in New York City who has been a vocal critic of the PRC government and the Chinese Communist Party. After the CAC requested that Company-1 terminate the dissidents meetings on the Company-1 platform, Jin worked to identify all accounts associated with the dissident, caused meetings related to the dissident to be hosted in a quarantine zone that is, on a server with known lags in response time and later worked to block all accounts associated with the dissident. Similarly, in 2019, Jin collaborated with the MPS and CAC to block accounts seeking to commemorate the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
The FBI Washington Field Office investigated the cases.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Alexander A. Solomon, Antoinette N. Rangel, Ian C. Richardson, Nicholas J. Moscow and Jessica K. Weigel of the Eastern District of New York, and Trial Attorney Scott A. Claffee of the National Security Divisions Counterintelligence and Export Control Section are prosecuting the cases.
The FBI has created a website for victims to report efforts by foreign governments to stalk, intimidate, or assault people in the United States. Please visit: http://www.fbi.gov/investigate/counterintelligence/transnational-repression.
Read more:
40 Officers of China's National Police Charged in Transnational ... - Department of Justice
- I spent years studying American communism. Heres what I learned - The Guardian - May 18th, 2024 [May 18th, 2024]
- Communism alive and well at Oakville's town hall - Toronto Sun - May 18th, 2024 [May 18th, 2024]
- The Southern Truth About Communism - Black Agenda Report - May 18th, 2024 [May 18th, 2024]
- Swiss rediscover communist zeal after 84-year hiatus - SWI swissinfo.ch - SWI swissinfo.ch in English - May 18th, 2024 [May 18th, 2024]
- Revolutionary Communists take on Tory warmongers - The Communist - May 18th, 2024 [May 18th, 2024]
- Communist Party of Ireland: On the 50th anniversary of the 1974 Dublin-Monaghan terrorist attack - In Defense of Communism - May 18th, 2024 [May 18th, 2024]
- Hung Cao: We Must Stop Communism From Taking Over America - One America News Network - May 18th, 2024 [May 18th, 2024]
- Florida Governor DeSantis signs new law mandating teaching the evils of communism to children as young as five - WSWS - May 1st, 2024 [May 1st, 2024]
- Trump, Biden, communism and more: Letters to the Editor, April 28, 2024 - Florida Today - May 1st, 2024 [May 1st, 2024]
- Communists to run in Karl Marx hometown's election - In Defense of Communism - May 1st, 2024 [May 1st, 2024]
- Slow Down. How Degrowth Communism Can Save the Earth book review - Counterfire - May 1st, 2024 [May 1st, 2024]
- Ron DeSantis wants to teach young people about communism. He should use rock n roll - Washington Examiner - May 1st, 2024 [May 1st, 2024]
- A Survivor of the Cultural Revolution Reviews New Book, 'The Devil and Communist China' - The Stream - May 1st, 2024 [May 1st, 2024]
- European Communist Action: Long live the 1st of May Long live socialism! - In Defense of Communism - May 1st, 2024 [May 1st, 2024]
- Florida children to learn that communism is evil, slavery a skills training program - The South Florida Times - May 1st, 2024 [May 1st, 2024]
- 'Unbridled Agenda of Communism or Socialism, Not in the Constitution Today': SC - ETV Bharat - May 1st, 2024 [May 1st, 2024]
- Pol Pot's Atrocities Still Matter, 45 Years After Khmer Rouge's Fall - Reason - January 12th, 2024 [January 12th, 2024]
- Taiwan election: victory in the face of Chinese communism as country gears up for 'fair election' - GB News - January 12th, 2024 [January 12th, 2024]
- Lenin lives! Join the communists to celebrate his life and ideas! - Socialist Appeal - January 12th, 2024 [January 12th, 2024]
- Goodbye Socialist Appeal The Communist is coming! - Socialist Appeal - January 12th, 2024 [January 12th, 2024]
- Xi Jinpings once-unquestioned authority is showing cracks - The Hill - January 12th, 2024 [January 12th, 2024]
- UK told to 'wake up' to Poland crisis with Donald Tusk 'turning back clock to communism' - Express - January 12th, 2024 [January 12th, 2024]
- The Reality of CommunismWhat Is Social Democracy and Why Is It a Capitalist Dictatorship? - revcom.us - January 12th, 2024 [January 12th, 2024]
- Why Did the Berlin Wall Fall? - The Imaginative Conservative - November 13th, 2023 [November 13th, 2023]
- 1947 and now - The Interpreter - November 13th, 2023 [November 13th, 2023]
- Albania's deal with Italy on migrants has been welcomed by many ... - Las Vegas Sun - November 13th, 2023 [November 13th, 2023]
- Grothman's Bipartisan Hmong New Year Resolution | U.S. ... - Glenn Grothman - November 13th, 2023 [November 13th, 2023]
- Another View: DeSantis was strong, Haley was sharp, Ramaswamy ... - Press Herald - November 13th, 2023 [November 13th, 2023]
- Communism in Britain: The unbroken thread - Socialist Appeal - November 11th, 2023 [November 11th, 2023]
- November 7 as Victims of Communism Day - 2023 - Reason - November 11th, 2023 [November 11th, 2023]
- The Fall of the Berlin Wall and the Fate of the West - Breakpoint - BreakPoint.org - November 11th, 2023 [November 11th, 2023]
- Cruzs new book Unwoke shows readers how to defeat cultural ... - 1330 WFIN - November 11th, 2023 [November 11th, 2023]
- The aftermath of the Velvet Revolution was justice delivered? - Radio Prague International - November 11th, 2023 [November 11th, 2023]
- Remember, Remember, the 9th of November - The Imaginative Conservative - November 11th, 2023 [November 11th, 2023]
- Country Road Chronicles: Communist camp in Westerly in the '30s - The Westerly Sun - November 11th, 2023 [November 11th, 2023]
- The Russian Revolution: The greatest event in history - Socialist Appeal - November 11th, 2023 [November 11th, 2023]
- What Happened to the ACLU by Helen Andrews | Articles - First Things - November 11th, 2023 [November 11th, 2023]
- Open Forum: Thinking of Donald Trump after Tuesday's election - The Winchester Star - November 11th, 2023 [November 11th, 2023]
- Was the USSR Socialist?: an Interview with Alexander Nogovishchev - Lefteast - November 11th, 2023 [November 11th, 2023]
- Remembrance Day: the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month - Fairfaxtimes.com - November 11th, 2023 [November 11th, 2023]
- New York Man Sentenced on Felony Assault Charge for Actions ... - Department of Justice - November 11th, 2023 [November 11th, 2023]
- U.S. Rep. Grothman: Bipartisan Hmong New Year resolution - WisPolitics.com - November 11th, 2023 [November 11th, 2023]
- 'Nazigate' Has Been Quickly Forgotten, But Scholars Warn Its ... - The Maple - November 11th, 2023 [November 11th, 2023]
- Defining the US-China cold war - - November 11th, 2023 [November 11th, 2023]
- Green Township voters remove 5 officials who support Gotion ... - FOX 17 West Michigan News - November 11th, 2023 [November 11th, 2023]
- Louisiana's 'In God We Trust' law tests limits of religion in public ... - American Press - November 11th, 2023 [November 11th, 2023]
- Czechast with Irena Kalhousov, Director of the Herzl Center for ... - Radio Prague International - November 11th, 2023 [November 11th, 2023]
- Letter to the editor: We mustn't forget communism's many victims - Bozeman Daily Chronicle - October 19th, 2023 [October 19th, 2023]
- Writing triumphed over 'hell of communism', says Albania's Kadare - Yahoo News - October 19th, 2023 [October 19th, 2023]
- Opinion Showing anti-communism the red card - Morning Star Online - October 19th, 2023 [October 19th, 2023]
- Letter to the Editor: The Minnesota Daily is against communists ... - Minnesota Daily - October 19th, 2023 [October 19th, 2023]
- Long before the Kentucky legislature waged war on 'woke,' it ... - The Hastings Tribune - October 19th, 2023 [October 19th, 2023]
- All the traditions lost after the Communists entered Beijing The China Project - The China Project - September 9th, 2023 [September 9th, 2023]
- Communism, the youth, and the fight for revolution - Socialist Appeal - September 9th, 2023 [September 9th, 2023]
- Salazar, 27 GOP cosponsors offer bill to educate students about ... - Ripon Advance - September 9th, 2023 [September 9th, 2023]
- Head of Zeus seizes history of communism by broadcaster and ... - The Bookseller - September 9th, 2023 [September 9th, 2023]
- Death threats, communism claims swirl around EV battery project - Automotive News - September 9th, 2023 [September 9th, 2023]
- The New Useful Idiots - Shield of the Republic - The Bulwark - September 9th, 2023 [September 9th, 2023]
- Rift in Samastha over stand towards CPM - Times of India - September 9th, 2023 [September 9th, 2023]
- South Korean president's anti-communist taunts are opening up ... - The Conversation - September 9th, 2023 [September 9th, 2023]
- Argentine priests celebrate reparation Mass after presidential ... - America: The Jesuit Review - September 9th, 2023 [September 9th, 2023]
- Oppenheimer: communism, McCarthyism, and the bomb | United ... - In Defence of Marxism - August 12th, 2023 [August 12th, 2023]
- When teachers have more say than parents, communism has arrived - Hernando Sun - August 12th, 2023 [August 12th, 2023]
- 130 years of Mayakovsky: Art, communism, and revolution - Socialist Appeal - July 20th, 2023 [July 20th, 2023]
- Captive Nations Week Marked for First Time in Ukraine - Jamestown - The Jamestown Foundation - July 20th, 2023 [July 20th, 2023]
- What Was the Marshall Plan? - The Collector - July 20th, 2023 [July 20th, 2023]
- Politics of the Rift: On Thorie Communiste - Notes - E-Flux - July 20th, 2023 [July 20th, 2023]
- The return of EU enlargement | The Strategist - The Strategist - July 20th, 2023 [July 20th, 2023]
- Putin's holy war on Ukraine - UnHerd - July 20th, 2023 [July 20th, 2023]
- The zing zazz factor in a slogan - RNZ - July 20th, 2023 [July 20th, 2023]
- Family who carried Sacred Heart statue were carried by Sacred ... - Catholic Diocese of Lincoln - July 20th, 2023 [July 20th, 2023]
- Risk and Revolution | Wen Stephenson - The Baffler - July 20th, 2023 [July 20th, 2023]
- Victims of Communism, Victims of Modernism - Heritage.org - June 7th, 2023 [June 7th, 2023]
- Communism: FIU event discusses Soviet influence in Cuba and the ... - PantherNOW - May 29th, 2023 [May 29th, 2023]
- Nuclear communism: Lukashenka offers 'nukes for everyone' - TVP World - May 29th, 2023 [May 29th, 2023]
- Georgi Gospodinov and Angela Rodel win International Booker ... - NPR - May 29th, 2023 [May 29th, 2023]
- The China Dragon Roars Back Whether the US Likes It or Not - KCRW - May 29th, 2023 [May 29th, 2023]
- EU, US might not be best digital ID models, but they can help African ... - Biometric Update - May 29th, 2023 [May 29th, 2023]
- Opinion: Young Canadians should learn about the Polish ... - The Hub - May 29th, 2023 [May 29th, 2023]
- Gig Line: Memorial Day - The Coastland Times | The Coastland Times - The Coastland Times - May 29th, 2023 [May 29th, 2023]