Peter Deng
邓麟云, Linyun Deng, Peter. He appeared in Zhang Zhehan's fandom in September 2022, vouched for by Lexus as a close friend of Zhang.
Falsified Credentials
On September 17, 2022, Lexus held a livestream with a man named Peter, to an audience of ~1000[1]. In it, Peter claimed to be close friends with Zhang Zhehan. He said that last year after 813 happened, he flew to Beijing many times to pull strings for Zhang Zhehan and also spent time in Shenzhen with him. In the livestream, Lexus backs up everything Peter says, implying that all of them rallied around Zhang last year. They also talk about Danny. On Peter's Douyin, he has videos with Yu Dehao. He appears to be close with the Shenzhen gang.
Lexus livestream
Peter's Douyin profile
Peter's Douyin with Yu Dehao
Peter is prolific about promoting himself on social media. He uses the same photos and similar bios as Douyin for his Instagram and Twitter accounts. His full name is Peter Deng, or Linyun Deng.
Peter's Douyin
Peter's Twitter
Peter's Instagram
Peter's legal name
Peter's LinkedIn profile shows that he is an executive/managing director at Goldman Sachs in New York. Peter talks about himself as an investment banker. Goldman Sachs is also on his Twitter profile. His education background shows Peking University, UC Berkeley, and Harvard Business School. In videos uploaded to his Douyin, Peter speaks frequently of attending Harvard and has videos of himself on Harvard campus, even dining with people he claims are Harvard faculty.
Peter's LinkedIn
Peter's LinkedIn
Peter's LinkedIn
Peter's Twitter profile
A number of Peter's online activities appear to be not in line with typical corporate compliance policies. This includes posting videos of what he claims are corporate meetings in Goldman Sachs offices, posting photos with clients, and his most recent involvement in fandom. An anonymous report was submitted on EthicsPoint, the reporting platform used by Goldman Sachs, on September 19. Goldman Sachs responded with request for clarification, as they could not identify anyone of this name in their records. The reporter send links to Peter's LinkedIn and other social media. Goldman Sachs responded on September 30 that Peter is not affiliated with them. They further clarified on October 3 that he has never worked for Goldman Sachs.
An inquiry was further submitted with the registrars of Harvard Business School and UC Berkeley. Both conducted thorough reviews based on both legal name and alternate names, for any level of degree attainable at the school. Neither school could confirm his attendance.
Alumni of Peking University provided the information that all graduation essays can be found in the public PKU Library, with records dating back over ten years. Peter claims to have graduated from PKU between 2005 and 2007. A search with his Chinese name in PKU Library did not turn up any graduation essay results (filters are used to limit results to graduation essays).
Peter also cannot be found in the CFA member directory.
Peter's LinkedIn account was removed shortly after it was reported to Goldman Sachs.
Background in China
Peter's Chinese name is 邓麟云. Over ten years ago, in 2008, he founded a charity for volunteer teaching in rural China called 童梦中国. The charity is now defunct. Articles about the charity mention that Peter graduated with a bachelor's from Peking University's Guanghua School of Management and a master's from UC Berkeley (different from the education history on his LinkedIn). Peter has multiple social media accounts in China, one of which contains photos and updates from his charity.
An essay about entrepreneurship on a Chinese document repository that mentions Peter and his charity[2]. In it, the author talks about Peter falsifying both his Peking University & Berkeley degrees as a commonly known fact. He defends Peter's actions with the belief that his intentions were to make his charity a success. He dismisses accusations that Peter misappropriated charity funds. These are the passages in the essay relevant to Peter:
The Baidu Baike of the charity recently edited on September 23, by a member of the Baidu Kedou team, the same group who edited the pages for Nogi Shrine, Dewi Sukarno, and Xie Yihua just before 813 last year. The user who edited Peter's charity page is a level 13 editor with 100% pass rate, a supermod.
Edit history of Peter's charity's Baidu Baike page
User who edited Peter's charity page
Public records show that Peter is associated with two companies in China, an apparel company and an education company. The education company had its registration revoked in 2016, for halt in business for over 6 months. However, as recently as January 2022, they were hiring on Chinese job sites.
Peter's education company, focused on teaching English, was founded in late 2011/early 2012. Another Weibo account belonging to Peter documented in detail Peter's activities in China during this period as he prepared to open his company. On his LinkedIn profile, he claimed to be at Harvard Business School from 2010 to 2012. Peter himself appears to have a very weak grasp of basic English sentence structure.
Relationship with Zhang Zhehan
On August 13th, 2021, during the height of the smear campaign against Zhang Zhehan that led to his cancellation, Peter liked Weibo polls run by marketing accounts participating in the coordinated smears[3].
Peter also liked a large number of posts on August 13 and 14 that are now deleted. Weibo on those two days was dominated by hot searches smearing Zhang Zhehan.
Zhang himself has never made any public references to Peter. After Peter livestreamed with Lexus, a photo of Zhang and Peter was passed around in private groups. The source and authenticity of this photo is unconfirmed.
Peter's livestream with Lexus was ported onto Weibo by 正则, a marketing account who appears to be employed to promote Zhang Sanjian. The video was viewed over 60,000 times and received over 9000 likes. Sophie commented on the post.
Activities After Exposure
Shortly after Peter's false credentials were publicly exposed on Twitter, he removed from his Douyin bio "Harvard&CFA&FRM" and his claim to being fluent in six languages.
Peter's current Douyin
Peter's previous Douyin
Peter livestreamed on his own Douyin account on October 16, again talking about Zhang Zhehan.
After this livestream and before early December, Peter set his Weibo account to six months visible only and removed Harvard Business School and Goldman Sachs from his Twitter profile.
