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New York Post
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Post
Who is Robert Shinn, ‘TikTok cult' leader whose home was raided in federal sex-trafficking probe?
Investigators from at least four federal agencies raided a California home Friday linked to mysterious 'TikTok' cult Pastor Robert Shinn, the founder of a so-called talent agency that allegedly exploited amateur dancers with promises of TikTok stardom. A handful of people were led away from the home — located in Los Angeles' Tujunga neighborhood — in handcuffs, after FBI, IRS, US Postal Service and Labor Department agents swooped in on the residence. However, it was unclear if Shinn, 87, who has been likened to a cult leader, was among them. Advertisement So, who exactly is Shinn? In 1994, he founded the Shekinah Church, a Christian congregation recently profiled in Netflix's documentary series 'Dancing for the Devil: The 7M TikTok Cult' that initially served as a house of worship for Korean Americans in LA. Shinn also owns 7M Films and is associated with several other California businesses, including Shinn Entertainment Corp., IP Random Film, IHD Studio and Glory Bag Records. Advertisement 3 Pastor Robert Shinn has multiple companies and may be worth $15 million. KTLA 5 He shares ownership of the home that was raided Friday with multiple people. A self-proclaimed 'man of God,' Shinn is alleged to have lured dancers to sign with his talent agency, 7M Films. He allegedly assured them he could turn them into TikTok sensations. Instead, Shinn allegedly financially and physically manipulated and abused the dancers, encouraging some of them to disown their families. Advertisement Other dancers have accused Shinn of sexual assault. The church allegedly encouraged members to surrender their time and money in support of its mission to save one billion souls from damnation. 3 It was unclear if Shinn was arrested during Friday's raid. KTLA 5 The warrants served at the house Friday involved allegations of sex trafficking, money laundering, mail fraud, tax evasion and COVID-19-related fraud, according to the Los Angeles Times. Advertisement Still others were forced to join the Shekinah Church and later served as recruiters for 7M. Shinn, who is married to Hannah Shinn, has previously denied claims that the Shenikah Church and 7M are affiliated, TV Insider reported. The Canadian-born Shinn is estimated to be worth $15 million. One of his children, singer-songwriter Kloë Shinn, defected from the church in 2022 with her husband Daniel Joseph, according to Cosmo, which added that he also has two sons, Conrad and Isaiah. Her music has appeared on reality shows like 'Queer Eye' and 'The Real Housewives' as well as the movie 'Random Encounters,' a 2013 film starring Meghan Markle — that was produced by her father. 3 Women have accused Shinn of physical and sexual assault. KTLA 5 Several former dancers and ex-members of the Shekinah Church teamed up to sue Shinn in 2022. The lawsuit alleges exploitation and labor law violations by the church and Shinn, and remains active. In 2009, a woman named Lydia Chung sued Shinn, alleging he'd forced her to turn over $3.8 million in assets through 'undue influence, mind control, coercive persuasion, oppression and other intimidating tactics,' according to the lawsuit. Advertisement She also said the church made her work six days a week, but never paid her. A judge ultimately ruled against her. In 2011, Jung Hee Lee, a former Shekinah member, sued Shinn for allegedly forcing her to work full-time for only a $30 weekly stipend. She won that case, and Shinn was ordered to pay her the compensation she should've received. Shinn himself filed a defamation lawsuit against several former church members after they referred to the organization as a cult, according to CNN.
Fox News
25-06-2025
- Fox News
Rodney King-era 'rooftop Korean' calls left-wing riots manufactured: 'looking for the next George Floyd'
A Los Angeles man who armed himself and took to the streets in 1992 to protect a local business during the height of the Rodney King unrest says today's rioters in the city are astroturfed for political purposes. Tony Moon, 53, is what is now known as a "rooftop Korean." Thirty-three years ago, the Korean-American, then 19, was asked to join a spontaneous movement alongside other Korean-Americans who armed themselves to protect their lives and property from being destroyed by violent rioters who were upset over the verdict in a trial against officers who beat Rodney King during a traffic stop. The officers were acquitted on charges of assault and excessive force, plunging the city into tumult as rioters attempted to burn down Los Angeles, causing 63 deaths and more than 2,000 injuries, according to the Los Angeles Times. Determined to protect their livelihoods, "rooftop Koreans" took to the streets – and to the rooftops of their own businesses – to deter rioters from causing trouble in their neighborhoods. "When the riots occurred, it wasn't anything that anyone foresaw obviously, but we were well aware of Rodney King and the verdict that was coming down," Moon told Fox News Digital. "And when that occurred is when everything kind of popped off. The reason why I went out was because a close and good friend of mine, his older brother had a stereo shop that was on the outskirts of near Koreatown." During the attack, Radio Korea became a go-to source of information for the Korean-American communities, alerting them to potential threats. "He called me Thursday evening after the radio announcement asking for volunteers to come to the community, to defend the community," Moon said. "And he told me that his brother's store might be threatened from the fires and the looting that was slowly traveling up north from the south, like South Central and South LA." Moon described a tense atmosphere, which he said had been building between the Black and Korean communities in the city since the fatal shooting of a Black girl by a Korean shop owner the year prior. The civil unrest at that time, Moon said, was organic. "The sentiment was much different then than it is now," he said. "Now it's all manufactured. And not only that, but there's no true grassroots support from any of the communities. You know, it's what I would say [is] part two of BLM/Antifa from 2020 that's being carried over." "But it doesn't have the same traction and support that it did back in 2020 with defunding the police, [and with] Black Lives Matter," he continued. "I don't see that, and what they're looking for is, they're looking for someone to martyr. They're looking for a death. They're looking for the next George Floyd." Moon emphasized his support for peaceful protest, but said that when damaging property, vandalization and looting occur, those activities cross the line. He also advised Angelenos who feel unsafe due to violent crime to do what he and others in the Korean-American community did more than three decades ago: arm themselves. "If it's a riot or if there's any sort of mayhem, social chaos going on in your neighborhood, invest in firearms," he said. "I mean, support the Second Amendment. Buy a gun, buy a rifle. I mean, the most easiest weapon to shoot is a shotgun. So invest in something like that and learn how to shoot it and be proficient with it, so that way it becomes part of your defense, whether it's for your home or your business." Earlier this month riots plagued Los Angeles, a so-called sanctuary city, since a series of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sweeps targeting criminal illegal immigrants. Federal law enforcement and police clashed with rioters in the city's streets, while those agitators burned cars, looted businesses, took over streets and graffitied buildings in the heart of downtown Los Angeles with anti-ICE and anti-Trump messaging. The city's mayor, Karen Bass, has blamed President Donald Trump for causing the unrest by deploying National Guard troops and U.S. Marines to protect federal property, and Gov. Gavin Newsom sued the Trump administration for the move. The Trump administration ordered 2,000 more members of the National Guard to the city last week, and ICE will continue conducting operations in the city.
New York Post
19-06-2025
- New York Post
How an original Rooftop Korean got red-pilled: ‘These protests are not organic'
They became the stuff of Second Amendment lore — young men with firearms, patrolling the streets and positioned on rooftops in the Koreatown neighborhood during the 1992 Los Angeles riots. Thirty years later, as the City of Angels again faces threats of anarchy, coupled with a defunded and demoralized police force, many people recall the group of men — later known as the Rooftop Koreans — who took it upon themselves to bulwark their community. 'Back then, I didn't really have any skin in the game, so to speak,' Tony Moon, now 53, tells The Post. Advertisement As the fires and looting crept north from South Central to Koreatown, Moon's father no longer had a business in the neighborhood. In fact, the family was living in nearby Hollywood. But a friend's brother asked for assistance protecting his stereo-equipment store on Hoover Street, and Moon, then 19, joined the militia of around 75 men to patrol the neighborhood from looters and vandals. 7 Meme @DonaldJTrumpJr/X Advertisement It worked. Bedlam gripped the city — the LAPD had stood down to the rioters — but Koreatown remained unscorched. The '92 riots erupted on a Wednesday after four LAPD officers were acquitted in a police brutality case in which they were caught on video beating suspect Rodney King, who was black, during an arrest after a high-speed chase for driving while intoxicated. The unrest lasted six days and would become the most destructive civil disruption in US history, leaving 63 people dead, thousands injured and a billion dollars in property damage.\ 7 Korean Americans guarded Koreatown during the 1992 Los Angeles riots. Wikipedia Advertisement LA Koreans felt particularly vulnerable; tensions with the black community were at an all-time high. A Korean shop owner in South Central the previous year shot and killed 15-year-old Latasha Harlins following a struggle when the woman accused the girl of trying to steal a bottle of orange juice. The shopkeeper was found guilty but sentenced only to probation, enraging the black community. In response, that year rapper Ice Cube released 'Black Korea,' a track full of anti-Asian racial epithets and threats of violence against Korean shopkeepers. 'It was lawless. A lot of us wondered if this was going to be a full-on attack on the [Korean] community. You could have pretty much gotten away with anything,' Moon recalls. Advertisement 7 Tony Moon is now a suburban family man — with an edge. Courtesy of Tony Moon But with riots returning to Los Angeles in recent years — Black Lives Matter in summer 2020 following George Floyd's death and again to a lesser extent last week protesting federal immigration enforcement — Moon sees few, if any, similarities to 1992. 'When the Rodney King verdict came through, there was genuine anger and frustration from that community. And I felt it, too,' Moon tells The Post from his home outside Los Angeles. 'These are not organic. There's no groundswell support from the community. Having gone through the 2020 BLM-Antifa riots and seeing how those were organized, we know that these are all manufactured, and they need to pay these people to show up,' he says. He accuses 'dark-money NGOs' of bankrolling the unrest, pointing for instance to Neville Singham, a China-linked tech tycoon who's under House probe. 7 Moon was a Rooftop Korean at 19, trying to prove himself to his father. Courtesy of Tony Moon 'Another good example would be the Tesla protests that you saw not that long ago, where they would show up at a specific time and they're out of there a couple hours later. If you're really passionate about your cause you would probably stay from sunup to sundown, but you can tell these people were on the clock.' His experiences in 1990s LA, in part, led to Moon's early, enthusiastic support for Barack Obama — until the Democrat's presidential term wore on and Moon became disillusioned with the Washington establishment. Advertisement 'I have a heart for the black community because I grew up with that culture. My hope was, with Obama, that with the black community, there would be a real, genuine change. Because as a country, we're only as strong as our weakest link. And right now, those areas are, I consider, our weakest link. Because they are the least educated, have the most crime. But I didn't see that change with Obama. And I saw how everything was just business as usual. Obama was just a neocon elitist, like everyone else,' Moon says. 'That's what communism is, which most people don't understand. These kids that are pushing for socialism, communism think that the people on top are going to be generous and kind to them, but they're not. They're just being used as useful tools. It's a feudal system again.' 7 A Los Angeles Korean shopping mall burns on the second day of the 1992 riots. AP While he was born in West Germany and immigrated to America at age 5, Moon grew up with horror stories of life under the communist North Korean regime. Advertisement In one family tale, his grandfather — suspected of having ties to anti-revolutionaries — was marched into a field to be executed by North Korean soldiers. A chance flyover of American helicopters spooked the troops, and he escaped. That's when the family decided to leave, eventually landing in the United States. 7 More than 1,000 Korean Americans rallied at LA's Admiral Park in 1992 to call for healing between the Korean and African-American communities. AP But at 19 years old, when Moon found himself standing guard outside a shopping center on Olympic Boulevard and New Hampshire Avenue carrying the Remington 870 shotgun he'd bought himself with his first paycheck, he wasn't thinking of any of that. Advertisement He always thought of himself as an Angeleno first — being Korean had little to do with it. At the time, 'I was kind of a screw up. I didn't finish high school. My dad was on to me,' Moon recalls. He got his act together and went to the University of Southern California, where he studied business. He began working as a mortgage lender and started a family; his kids are now 14 and 16. 'I became just a Joe Schmo citizen.' As COVID-19 restrictions intensified in 2020, Moon began to suspect the authorities were lying about the illness' severity. Then he started following bizarre behavior from vote-counting precincts on election night that year. 7 Moon became a meme again in 2001. @PplsCityCouncil/X Advertisement He joined Twitter to have a place to vent his political frustrations and was shocked to discovere he'd become a meme: The younger generation had stumbled upon 1992's 'Rooftop Koreans' (a term Moon had never heard before) and, from 2020 riots' ashes, had sent out the bat-signal beckoning their return. 'They understood the call went out. A lot of the Korean guys were saying, 'Yeah, I'll go out again,'' Moon remembers. (Turns out they weren't needed; Koreatown was left untouched in 2020, as if someone had already gotten the message.) By now the mild-mannered suburban father was rapidly becoming a full-on political activist. On Jan. 6, 2021, Moon showed up in Washington, DC, to express solidarity with election-integrity protesters — though he didn't go inside the Capitol that day. 'I would fight for anyone's right to protest and speak their mind regardless of whatever side of the issue you're on,' Moon says, taking a swig from an orange water bottle — the very same bottle that in July 2021 led him to become another meme. That month he joined a protest outside Wi Spa in LA's Koreatown in support of women who'd complained about a nude male in their changing room, clashing with pro-transgender activists. As Moon was giving an interview a woman approached and kicked him in the groin. He reacted by bonking her with the water bottle, a moment that went viral. With more anti-Trump protests being organized across the country, does Moon think we're in for a repeat of 1992? Or a sequel to 2020's 'Summer of Love'? Not really. 'You can't fool people a hundred percent of the time. You can't use the same playbook over and over again. People have a certain degree of pattern recognition,' he says, believing the unrest is more theater than heart. 'I think everyone's going through riot fatigue.' Maybe even the ones being paid for it.
Yahoo
13-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Donald Trump Jr. appears to suggest 'rooftop Koreans' should shoot protestors
[Source] Korean Americans in Los Angeles are condemning Donald Trump Jr. for posting a contentious image that references their community's experience during the 1992 riots amid ongoing immigration protests. About the meme: Trump Jr. posted the controversial photo showing an armed man on a rooftop with the caption 'Make Rooftop Koreans Great Again!' on social media Sunday night. It referenced Korean shop owners who defended their businesses with firearms during the 1992 LA riots after police forces withdrew from certain areas. Photojournalist Hyungwon Kang, who took the original photograph, said it was used without permission and demanded Trump Jr. to take it down, noting that it was being used 'out of context.' What they're saying: The Korean American Federation of Los Angeles denounced the post as demonstrating 'poor judgment' and warned that Trump Jr.'s actions 'could pose serious risks during this tense period.' The group further urged that 'the past trauma of the Korean people be never, ever exploited for any purpose.' Kang also told Reuters that the current situation with adequate police protection 'is not even remotely similar to the dire situation for Korean Americans of those dark hours during the 1992 LA Riots.' Trending on NextShark: This story is part of The Rebel Yellow Newsletter — a bold weekly newsletter from the creators of NextShark, reclaiming our stories and celebrating Asian American voices. Subscribe free to join the movement. If you love what we're building, consider becoming a paid member — your support helps us grow our team, investigate impactful stories, and uplift our community. Subscribe here now! Trending on NextShark: Download the NextShark App: Want to keep up to date on Asian American News? Download the NextShark App today!
Yahoo
10-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Korean Americans criticise Donald Trump Jr. for 'reckless' social media post
By Jack Kim SEOUL (Reuters) -An association of Korean Americans in Los Angeles has criticised Donald Trump Jr., the son of the U.S. president, for "reckless" comments on social media and urged him not to exploit a riot that devastated their community 33 years ago. The Korean American Federation of Los Angeles also said an operation by the U.S. administration to round up suspected undocumented immigrants lacked "due legal procedures". Donald Trump Jr. posted a photograph of a man with a rifle on a rooftop on X with a message: "Make Rooftop Koreans Great Again!" referring to actions by the Korean American community during the 1992 race riots in Los Angeles. The federation in separate statements expressed concern over the developments in Los Angeles over the last week and said their businesses were seriously affected by the crackdown and arrests. "While the unrest has not yet subsided, Donald Trump Jr. ... showed the recklessness of posting a post on X on Sunday, June 8, mocking the current unrest by mentioning the 'Rooftop Korean' from the LA riots 33 years ago," it said in a statement on Monday Los Angeles time. "As the eldest son of the current president and an influencer with approximately 15 million followers, his actions could pose a huge risk in these icy times, and we strongly urge the past trauma of the Korean people be never, ever exploited for any purpose." In 1992, some members of the community, armed with firearms, took up positions on store rooftops and reportedly fired on looters, giving rise to the "Rooftop Koreans" folklore. They had taken their defence into their own hands after they felt official law enforcement was not protecting them from unrest following the police beating of a black motorist Rodney King. Kang Hyung-won, a photojournalist who reported for the Los Angeles Times during the 1992 unrest, said on X in a reply to Donald Trump Jr.'s post the picture had been taken by him and it was used without his permission. "You're using the photo out of context. Please take it down," Kang said. Kang reached by email said he would be available to comment later. No-one from the Washington administration could immediately be reached for comment.
