A federal grand jury in Manhattan has issued subpoenas as part of a Department of Justice investigation into Neville Roy Singham, a China-based billionaire accused of funneling hundreds of millions of dollars through shell corporations and a Goldman Sachs philanthropy fund into a web of left-wing activist organizations across the United States. The probe, launched out of the Southern District of New York, is examining potential wire fraud, bank fraud, and money laundering.
U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton opened the investigation. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche authorized it. The Trump administration has framed the effort as part of a broader crackdown on financial crimes inside the nonprofit sector, an industry where, as the administration sees it, tax-exempt status has been exploited to bankroll political activism with little accountability.
The grand jury action follows a Fox News Digital investigation published in mid-March that documented how Singham allegedly pumped $285 million from his base in Shanghai into a Goldman Sachs philanthropy fund and two shell corporations. Those entities then fed the money into what Fox described as "a constellation of nonprofit organizations, media operations, and activist groups pushing sectarian division, identity politics, and support for socialist politicians."
Singham is not a household name, but the organizations his money allegedly sustained are familiar to anyone who has watched the American left over the past several years. Breitbart News reported that Singham poured more than $100 million into groups including CODEPINK, co-founded by his wife, Jodie Evans, and the People's Forum, whose co-executives are members of the Party for Socialism and Liberation.
The PSL connection matters. The Washington Examiner reported that Singham-connected groups share overlapping leadership with the PSL, which has established dozens of so-called "Liberation Centers" across the country. The network has been linked to anti-Israel protests and pro-China advocacy, and some of the organizations involved may have run afoul of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
The $285 million figure and the $100 million figure cited in earlier reporting raise their own questions. Whether those numbers describe overlapping pools of money or distinct tranches remains unclear. What is clear is the scale: a billionaire operating from Shanghai allegedly used American financial infrastructure to underwrite political activism on American soil.
The role of Goldman Sachs adds another dimension. The New York Post reported that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned Goldman Sachs it could be implicated in the alleged conspiracy if it did not cooperate with the DOJ probe. Fox News reported that Bessent personally met with Goldman CEO David Solomon and delivered the ultimatum.
A Goldman Sachs spokesperson offered a carefully worded response: "All distributions from Mr. Singham's donor-advised fund were made to legal nonprofits, as determined by the IRS. There have been no distributions from the account since August 2023, and it was closed in early 2024."
That statement acknowledges the fund existed and that money moved through it. It does not address whether the downstream recipients used the money lawfully, or whether the routing itself constituted fraud. Grand jurors will presumably want to know more.
Fox News also revealed a 172-page report authored by Singham in which he laid out what he called his "theory of change." The document reportedly invoked 20th-century Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong's battle plan to wage a "people's war" to spread communism. Mao drew his own inspiration from Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin.
Separately, Fox discovered a clip of a speech in which Singham called the United States a "fascist" nation and voiced support for a "new world order." The details of when and where he delivered those remarks remain unclear, but the ideological orientation is not subtle.
Singham sold his Chicago-based tech company Thoughtworks in 2017. After that sale, he relocated to Shanghai and began channeling money into activist groups while attending Chinese government-linked events, the Washington Examiner reported. The trajectory, American tech fortune, relocation to China, massive funding of U.S. leftist organizations, is precisely the kind of pattern that raises questions about foreign influence in domestic politics.
The DOJ's willingness to pursue those questions marks a shift. For years, conservative investigators flagged Singham's network. Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute and a Breitbart News senior contributor, detailed Singham's operations in his 2024 book Blood Money: Why the Powerful Turn a Blind Eye While China Kills Americans. Schweizer wrote that Singham and Alibaba co-founder Joseph Tsai helped radical groups use transgenderism as a tool against what they viewed as the "capitalist order."
The Breitbart News Foundation conducted its own review of corporate records earlier this year and found closer-than-previously-reported ties between Star Stream, a Shanghai-based consulting firm Singham founded, and Maku, a Chinese media firm that the New York Times described as specializing in Chinese communist propaganda. The connection between Singham's consulting operation and a propaganda outfit raises the question of whether his U.S.-directed funding served Beijing's interests as much as any domestic ideological agenda.
No charges have been filed. No arrests have been made. The investigation is ongoing, and Singham has not publicly responded to the probe. But the Southern District of New York is not a jurisdiction known for issuing subpoenas casually. It is, as Fox News noted, "one of the country's most powerful districts for federal prosecutions."
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith, a Missouri Republican, did not hold back. As the New York Post reported, Smith said:
"For years, Roy Singham has abused the generous tax status awarded to tax exempt organizations to fund left wing chaos and violence in our country. It's about time he is brought to justice and he is held accountable for his ties to the CCP."
The Singham probe does not exist in a vacuum. The Trump administration has shown a willingness to use federal law enforcement tools against individuals and organizations that previously operated with little scrutiny. The FBI recently raided an Ohio voter group's headquarters as part of a separate federal fraud investigation, signaling that nonprofit and activist organizations face a new enforcement environment.
That environment extends beyond nonprofits. Democrats have expressed alarm over DOJ investigations touching prominent political figures, suggesting the administration intends to follow the money wherever it leads.
The Singham case, though, is distinct in one important respect: the China connection. This is not a story about ordinary domestic political fundraising or garden-variety nonprofit mismanagement. The allegation is that a billionaire sitting in Shanghai used American financial institutions to move enormous sums into organizations that advanced communist ideology and Chinese government interests on American streets. If the evidence supports that narrative, the implications extend well beyond one man's philanthropy.
Several open questions remain. The names of the two shell corporations have not been disclosed. The specific recipients of the grand jury subpoenas are unknown. Whether Singham or his representatives have retained counsel or plan to contest the investigation has not been reported. And the fundamental question, whether this was ideological philanthropy or something closer to a foreign influence operation, awaits the grand jury's work.
The broader question of foreign money and foreign influence flowing through American political networks is one that Washington has talked about for years without doing much about it. The nonprofit sector, in particular, has operated as a kind of regulatory gray zone, tax-exempt, lightly supervised, and enormously powerful.
For too long, the assumption in Washington was that the nonprofit world policed itself. The Singham investigation suggests the current administration disagrees. When $285 million moves from Shanghai through Goldman Sachs into activist groups that share leadership with an avowed socialist party, someone in government ought to ask hard questions.
It took long enough. But a grand jury in Manhattan is now asking them.