The chief financial officer of Epoch Times has been charged with a money laundering scheme valued at $67 million.

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The Department of Justice announced on Monday that the CFO of the politically conservative news source, Epoch Times, has been arrested for using cryptocurrency to launder $67 million in illegally obtained funds. Weidong Guan, also known as Bill Guan, is facing charges of money laundering and bank fraud between 2020 and 2024. According to U.S. Attorney Damian Williams, Guan was part of a conspiracy to benefit himself, the media company, and its affiliates. It is alleged that the company’s revenue increased by 410 percent due to the use of cryptocurrency to purchase illegally obtained funds, which Guan claimed were donations. In response to the charges, Epoch Times has stated that they will cooperate with the investigation and have suspended Guan. The operation was reportedly carried out by a team under Guan’s management, known as the “Make Money Online” team. This team is accused of using cryptocurrency to purchase crime proceeds, including unemployment insurance benefits, at discounted rates and then depositing the money into bank accounts associated with Guan and the Epoch Times. The newspaper, founded in 2000 by Chinese Americans to combat Chinese government propaganda, has long been accused of being sympathetic to the banned Falun Gong movement and reflecting their political positions in their coverage of the Chinese government. However, the Epoch Times has denied these allegations and has grown from a free newspaper in New York to a global media company, with a presence in multiple Western and Asian languages. In 2019, the newspaper was banned from advertising on Facebook due to pro-Trump ads that violated the social network’s rules on political advertising and transparency. The newspaper disputed the ban and claimed to have been running a successful digital marketing campaign. A 2019 investigation found that the outlet had spent over $1.5 million to promote pro-Trump content, second only to Donald Trump’s official campaign. However, the Epoch Times argued that this report was incorrect.