Chinese cyber actors have claimed to have impersonated The Epoch Times to then send threatening emails to multiple federal agencies and the White House.
The attackers notified The Epoch Times of their threats in a Chinese language email dated Sept. 6 with the subject line: “See the screenshots, you are done.”
Three screenshots of the threats were attached to the email; one of them showing the White House Contact Us page, with the publication’s phone number and email filled in. In a comment littered with exclamation marks, the sender claimed to represent practitioners of Falun Gong, a spiritual community persecuted in China, and threatened violence against the White House.
“We will throw incendiary bombs and explosives! If anyone tries to stop us, we will open fire!” the message states. It then threatened to “simultaneously broadcast this magnificent feat live” on a variety of platforms, including YouTube, The Epoch Times, and its sister media NTD.
It claimed that the acts were in retaliation over “your failure to help us address the Communist Party’s transnational repression.”
Similar fake threats were sent to the CIA, the Department of Justice, and the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department.
The cyber impersonator used an Epoch Times email address as the contact email in the threatening messages.
“What can you do with me?” the sender wrote in Chinese. The sender claimed to be based in Xi'an, capital of Shaanxi Province in central China.
Newspaper of the Hong Kong edition of The Epoch Times is on display at newsstands in Hong Kong on Sept. 17, 2024. Kiri Choy/The Epoch Times
The Epoch Times was founded by Falun Gong practitioners in 2000 in Atlanta with a goal to provide uncensored news out of heavily-censored China. It has placed a focus on reporting the human rights abuses in that country, including the ruling communist party’s eradication campaign against spiritual group Falun Gong.
Huang Wanqing, editor-in-chief of the Chinese language Epoch Times, said the impersonated emails align closely with intimidation tactics carried out by agents of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its proxies.
“We condemn the perpetrator for trying to create terror,” Huang said in a statement.
A Broader CCP Campaign
The threat emails appear to fit into a broader campaign by the Chinese regime.
In 2024, a political insider revealed a directive issued by Chinese leader Xi Jinping to suppress Falun Gong globally beginning in late 2022. The campaign’s key targets are Falun Gong-founded companies. Xi expressed particular frustration with media organizations, which he said had become the main “hostile force” against the regime in the English-speaking world.
Not long after Xi’s instruction, two Chinese agents began scheming to bribe the IRS to open an investigation against Shen Yun Performing Arts, another group started by the Falun Gong community. The plan ultimately failed, and the men received prison time.
Shen Yun, which aims to showcase “China without communism,” has also received a large volume of harassment emails from suspected Chinese agents. While the arts group is on tour, the intimidators demand theaters to cancel performances, threatening violence such as shootings and bombings if they don’t comply. One email in February forced the Kennedy Center to evacuate hours before Shen Yun’s premiere, leading to condemnation from the White House.
The Falun Dafa Information Center over the past year has documented more than 130 cases of threats made against Shen Yun and Falun Gong; many involved fake bomb threats, as well as threats of mass shootings. Some of the threats focused on Shen Yun performers, their training facilities, as well as U.S. lawmakers supportive of Falun Gong. None of the threats have materialized.
In January, the Falun Dafa Information Center warned of a rise in “malicious impersonations of Falun Gong practitioners,” both on social media and in emails to public venues and elected officials. Journalists, law enforcement, and others should exercise caution when seeing “strange, violent, or suspicious messages” purported to be from Falun Gong practitioners or Shen Yun-affiliated individuals, it said.
The center’s executive director, Levi Browde, at the time expressed concerns that “the regime or its proxies may be plotting a more serious incident, even a violent one, using fake Falun Gong practitioners,” with a goal to “accelerate current tactics to discredit the practice and turn public opinion in the United States and globally against Falun Gong.”
“These are blatant and audacious attempts by Beijing or their proxies to depict practitioners as extreme or irrational. The fact that they would stoop this low in their attempts to malign our faith in the West shows perhaps just how desperate they are,” Browde told The Epoch Times in a statement on Sept. 11.
In a previous investigation of similar incidents targeting legislators in Taiwan, local authorities determined the individuals had operated from China, using virtual private network services to mask their real location.
Taiwan’s Criminal Investigation Bureau said that its multiagency investigation has traced the emails back to Xi’an.
Eva Fu
Reporter
Eva Fu is an award-winning, New York-based journalist for The Epoch Times focusing on U.S. politics, U.S.-China relations, religious freedom, and human rights. Contact Eva at [email protected]
