A federal grand jury in Manhattan has issued subpoenas as part of a widening investigation into Neville Roy Singham, the billionaire socialist financier who lives in Shanghai and has funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into a constellation of left-wing nonprofits now accused of serving as fronts for Chinese Communist Party influence operations on American soil.
Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche authorized the grand jury to issue the subpoenas, and U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton for the Southern District of New York launched the probe, Just the News reported. The investigation centers on possible violations of tax laws and the Foreign Agents Registration Act, whether Singham's nonprofits unlawfully moved money and lied about it.
No charges have been filed. But the subpoenas mark a concrete federal escalation against a financial network that congressional investigators, watchdog groups, and multiple news outlets have spent years trying to expose.
Singham, an American citizen worth nearly a billion dollars, built his fortune in the tech industry. He now lives in Shanghai. His wife, Jodie Evans, co-founded the anti-war group Code Pink. The New York Times reported in August 2023 on the couple's financial ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
The scope of Singham's domestic spending is staggering. Fox News reported that Singham funneled an estimated $278 million into a broad network of nonprofits since 2017, routed through the Goldman Sachs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund. A separate Breitbart account placed the figure at $285 million moved from Shanghai through a Goldman Sachs philanthropy fund and two shell corporations into nonprofit organizations, media operations, and activist groups.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent personally warned Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon that the bank could face scrutiny for alleged conspiracy in funneling Singham's money, Fox News reported. Goldman Sachs has pledged cooperation with the investigation.
That a major Wall Street institution may have served as the pipeline for a China-based billionaire to bankroll radical domestic activism is a fact that deserves far more public attention than it has received.
At the heart of the probe sits People's Forum Inc., a tax-exempt nonprofit that functions as the fiscal sponsor for a web of progressive and radical organizations. The Center to Advance Security in America, a watchdog group known as CASA, recently filed an IRS complaint seeking a full probe of People's Forum's finances and tax-exempt status.
CASA Director James Fitzpatrick laid out the group's concerns plainly:
"People's Forum Inc. is the tax-exempt fiscal sponsor of many progressive and radical organizations, including the Venceremos Brigade, which engage in demonstrations often crossing the threshold from protected speech into illegal activity, including many which have resulted in arrests, violence against police officers, and interference in federal immigration enforcement."
The complaint alleges that People's Forum has taken an active role in coordinating domestic unrest, including pro-Hamas encampments on college campuses following the October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel. It also alleges the group joined approximately 100 organizations to oppose a bill that would strip tax-exempt status from nonprofits that supported terrorist organizations.
The pattern is familiar: a tax-exempt entity collects donations, sponsors radical satellite groups, and then claims the legal protections of a charity while its affiliates engage in conduct that looks nothing like charitable work. It is a model that other political funding networks on the left have also employed, routing money through layers of organizations to obscure its ultimate purpose.
Fitzpatrick called for immediate IRS action:
"We believe the many potentially illegal activities that People's Forum has engaged in are grounds for a potential revocation of their tax-exempt charitable status. An immediate and full IRS investigation is appropriate to make this determination."
The grand jury investigation did not materialize out of thin air. In April 2025, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley sent a letter to FBI Director Kash Patel and then-Attorney General Pam Bondi requesting an investigation into whether People's Forum violated FARA by failing to register as a foreign agent.
Grassley's assessment was blunt:
"It appears that The People's Forum's values are heavily influenced by Singham's money and China's propaganda."
That a sitting Senate Judiciary chairman felt compelled to formally request a FARA investigation signals how seriously Republican lawmakers view the alleged China connection. FARA exists precisely for this scenario, to ensure that organizations acting on behalf of foreign powers identify themselves as such, rather than masquerading as homegrown American advocacy groups.
The broader question of Chinese influence in American political life is not theoretical. A confessed Chinese agent was found to have donated to Democratic campaigns, and a former California mayor pleaded guilty to acting as a secret agent of China, cases that illustrate how Beijing's influence apparatus operates through individuals and institutions that appear, on the surface, to be ordinary participants in American civic life.
Senior Republican lawmakers have lined up behind the DOJ investigation. Sen. Jim Banks of Indiana did not hold back about Singham's loyalties, telling Fox News:
"Neville Singham is a traitor to our country. He has ties to the CCP... all of his loyalties lie with the Chinese Communist Party."
Banks also directed his criticism at the financial institutions that allegedly facilitated the money flow:
"Wall Street should know that you can't get away with helping our biggest enemy. You can't get away with helping the Chinese Communist Party through money funneled through tech billionaires like Neville Singham."
Rep. Pat Fallon and House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith have also backed the probe, Breitbart reported, as the investigation targets potential wire fraud, bank fraud, and money laundering in addition to FARA violations.
The bipartisan silence from Democrats on this matter is itself telling. When the accusation involves a billionaire funneling foreign-linked money into progressive causes, the usual chorus demanding transparency goes quiet.
The investigation carries weight beyond the courtroom because the organizations Singham allegedly finances are not abstract policy shops. They are, according to CASA's complaint, groups whose activities have "resulted in arrests, violence against police officers, and interference in federal immigration enforcement."
Adam Sohn, described as an intelligence expert, told Fox News that organizations tied to Singham would "have no reason for existence" without his money. He framed the domestic consequences in stark terms:
"I think Americans are seeing what this ecosystem looks like in the streets of our country. These aren't protests, it's coordinated chaos and attacks on infrastructure."
Secretary of State Marco Rubio reinforced that assessment at a recent press conference, stating that "more than 80% of radical violence is now driven by far-left and anarchist actors." The underlying methodology for that figure was not detailed, but the claim reflects a growing consensus within the administration that left-wing political violence has been systematically undercounted and under-investigated.
The federal government's willingness to pursue grand jury investigations into institutional misconduct, whether election irregularities or nonprofit fraud, marks a departure from the years when such probes seemed reserved for one side of the political spectrum.
The investigation is at the subpoena stage. No indictments have been returned. Several important questions remain open.
Neither People's Forum nor Singham has publicly responded to the investigation or the underlying allegations. An SDNY spokesman did not respond to a Just the News inquiry before publication. Whether the IRS has acted on CASA's complaint is unknown.
The specific targets of the subpoenas, which individuals, which documents, which financial records, have not been disclosed. Whether Jodie Evans, Singham's wife and Code Pink co-founder, is a subject of the investigation or merely a referenced figure is also unclear.
And the fundamental question at the center of the case remains unresolved: Did Singham's nonprofit network operate as an unregistered foreign agent of the Chinese Communist Party, using tax-exempt American charities as cover? That is what the grand jury will have to determine.
The case also raises questions about how many other foreign-linked influence operations may be hiding behind the same nonprofit structures. Congressional Republicans have demanded DOJ probes into other instances where American officials or organizations appeared to act on behalf of hostile foreign governments.
For years, the American nonprofit sector has operated as a largely unpoliced space where vast sums of money move with minimal scrutiny. The tax-exempt designation confers enormous advantages, donor anonymity, freedom from most taxes, public trust, and in return demands only that the organization serve a legitimate charitable, educational, or social-welfare purpose.
When that designation is allegedly exploited to launder foreign influence money into domestic political activism, the abuse strikes at the foundation of the system. Every legitimate charity in America depends on public confidence that the nonprofit label means something. Networks like the one under investigation corrode that confidence.
The grand jury in the Southern District of New York now has the tools to follow the money. The question is whether the trail from Shanghai to Manhattan to the streets of American cities leads where the evidence suggests it does.
If a near-billionaire living in China can spend hundreds of millions of dollars funding radical groups on American soil, through a Wall Street bank, under the protection of a tax-exempt charity, and face no consequences for years, the system is not working. It is long past time someone checked the receipts.
