Yi Zhou, and a curious case of disappearing charities

 

Yi Zhou, and a curious case of disappearing charities

 

Around November, 2023, Google indexed a website belonging to a charity founded by an Italian AI-“director” Yi Zhou, intothesunfoundation.org:

 

The website for the charity is lackluster, with a vague, AI-generated “mission” message, empty events tab and a “Contact Us” tab that suggests users provide their personal information instead of displaying any actual contact links for the company.

 

The message offers no elaboration as to the “health challenges” the foundation allegedly offers help with.

 

The fillable fields are set to show white font against the white background. Some might think it’s done on purpose, to confuse those in need, making them think the page isn’t actually working.

I have contacted the foundation for information, but received no feedback.

The only perfectly operable tab on the website is the “Donate” tab. Let’s take a closer look at it:

 

The charity is called “Into the Sun Foundation”, yet the money will be sent directly to “Into the Sun Investment”.

Into the Sun Investment is a corporation owned and founded by Yi Zhou in 2023.

 

Now, US-based charities can direct funds to investment companies, but it requires strict adherence to IRS regulations, ensuring funds serve charitable (not private) purposes and using proper forms, and potentially undergoing extra scrutiny for private foundations.

But there is a problem. Into The Sun Foundation DOES NOT APPEAR TO BE REGISTERED with the IRS. Give.org, Charity Navigator and Charity Watch show no match for the foundation in their databases. IRS openly offers files on charity income disclosure, and a thorough check of the Publication 78 data, information from the list of Exempt organizations by state and region (for California and New York, the two states Ms. Zhou has connections to) yielded no information about Into The Sun Foundation. The e-postcard data on the IRS website shows no sign of Into the Sun Foundation, either.

Surprisingly, the foundation has been linked to Yi Zhow’s animated AI movie titled “Stardust Future”. Below is an exert from a Deadline article about it:

 

 

Now, the director (Ms. Zhou) claims she will donate proceeds from the film to, essentially, her own foundation, that will re-direct money to her private foreign investment company. Ms. Zhou effectively promises to take money from one of her pockets to put it back into the other one. Quite a curious case for a charity that accepts donations, offers no transparency on how the funds are actually used and keeps no tangible records.

With no records and no income disclosure, this creates a dangerously convenient environment for potential money laundering.

Especially if we take into account the fact that Ms. Zhou has produced no profitable projects in the last few years, has no clearly disclosed sponsors other than her own companies, yet her last AI film’s estimated budget allegedly reached $20 million.

 

And this is not her only charity…

Yi Zhou’s First Timer Fund’s website was indexed by Google back in July, 2024.

 

The website is much like Ms. Zhou’s first charity website: mostly empty, filled with AI-generated messages and pictures, soliciting user information in the “Contact us” tab, and with the same peculiar Donate tab re-directing money to her investment corporation.

 

The Fund shows no match in IRS databases, or on Give.org, Charity Navigator or Charity Watch, either.

The First Timer Fund has a page on Instagram. Funnily enough, the website of the Fund doesn’t match the one indicated on the said page. Firsttimerfund.com is a dead link. Notice the name of the company indicated next to it in the screenshot below:

 

The actual Fund website is not mentioned on any of Ms. Zhou’s Instagram pages, it’s nowhere to be seen on the websites of Into the Sun Investment and Into the Sun Entertainment (Into the Sun Foundation is not mentioned either). Moreover, Yi Zhou’s interview published in Hollywood reporter claims the Fund operates as a contest, providing the funding to the best project, while the statement on the Into the Sun Investment website claims the company has the right to use any submissions in its’ future projects without reimbursing the original author!

 

 

 

The Fund does not appear to keep any record of donations, either. Thus, it is reasonable to assume, that these two unregistered charities linked to the founder’s own foreign investment corporation can easily be used as potential money laundering venues.

In January, 2026, information on the two suspicious “charity” websites owned by Ms. Yi Zhou went online on X.

Within a week of posting the findings, both websites were completely removed from the Internet, and Ms. Zhou posted the following on her social media pages:

 

Her defense was to state the charities didn’t even exist yet, it was all just a “buzz idea”, “mock-up sites” and a “design study.” Which is very odd, considering she was more than willing to talk about her “foundations” in interviews dating years back!

Let’s go back to her interviews again for a moment:

Exhibit A: First Timer Fund

 

 

 

Here we have a Hollywood Reporter interview from May, 2023, discussing the Fund and terms of project submission for creators looking to get their movies funded by the “charity”. The charity that, apparently, doesn’t even exist yet! Was this a ploy to harvest creative ideas and use them for her personal projects? Or is she lying through her teeth now that the Fund’s been unearthed and checked through the IRS registries?

The other “charity”, the Into The Sun Foundation, a lack-luster “health-related” charity that didn’t even bother defining their missions and goals, did initially look like a mock-up… Except Ms. Zhou just couldn’t help but stroke her own ego in her 2025 Deadline interview:

 

 

How come she states the proceeds “support” (Present Tense) the Into the Sun Foundation, if it doesn’t exist yet and she now claims there was never any activity launched within the supposed charities?!

Manipulative narcissists just can’t stop telling on themselves, can they? Points to ponder…

Now, what about the Into The Sun Investment Corporation owned by Ms. Zhou?

Let’s take a closer look at the company info:

 

 

Incorporation State: Delaware. The corporation is operating in California.

The company had to be registered as a “foreign corporation”, since it operates outside the state of incorporation. But why register is in a state she has no actual business in? The answer is the lax laws and rather interesting “opportunities” offered by the State of Delaware to various businesses.

See below:

Here are some controversial reasons a corporation might register in Delaware:

• Extreme Corporate Secrecy & Anonymous Shell Companies: Delaware does not require companies to disclose the names of officers, directors, or owners in public filings. This makes it incredibly easy to create “shell companies”, entities with no active business or assets, to mask the true ownership of the company.
• Facilitating Money Laundering & Fraud: The lack of transparency means these anonymous shell companies can be used to shift “dirty money” from one place to another, acting as “getaway cars for criminals and the corrupt across the globe,” according to Global Witness. This includes hiding cartel drug money, facilitating Ponzi schemes, and enabling tax evasion.
• “The Delaware Loophole” (Tax Avoidance): Delaware does not impose corporate income tax on companies that do business outside the state. Companies can transfer intangible assets (like trademarks, patents, and copyrights) to a Delaware subsidiary, which then charges the operating company a fee for using them, reducing taxable income in higher-tax states.

What do we have in the end? A corporation registered in a state that requires practically no transparency in public filings (creating a perfect environment for money laundering) and two supposedly inactive charities that “weren’t launched”, but were actively mentioned and discussed in interviews by their founder throughout the years.

The answer is in the open. Ms. Zhou’s statement is a lie, an attempt to hide the fact that she was operating two potential money laundering hubs while smearing the name of another (IRS-registered) charity that provides actual help to those in need.

Maybe next time Ms. Zhou decides to equate supporters of someone else’s charity to literal sex-trafficking enablers she’ll remember to sort out her own “charities” with the legal authorities instead of sweeping them under the rug? Wishful thinking…