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A former senior federal prosecutor who served during the Biden administration has been referred to the Justice Department for possible criminal investigation over whether she misled FBI agents about her role in a fraud case, Fox News Digital reported Thursday in an exclusive.
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Shop NowJina Choi joined the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California in late 2023, where Biden-appointed U.S. Attorney Ismail Ramsey tapped her to lead the Corporate and Securities Fraud Section. Before that, she had represented IRL, a social-media startup co-founded by Abraham Shafi.
IRL shut down in 2023 after a board-directed investigation concluded that 95% of its users were likely bots, a finding Shafi disputed.
He was indicted in 2025 on wire fraud, securities fraud and obstruction charges. Prosecutors allege he passed off paid user growth as organic while raising about $170 million from investors.
Because of her prior work for the company, prosecutors have said Choi was screened from the IRL investigation.
The referral, sent Tuesday by a lawyer Shafi retained separately from his defense team, alleges that internal communications and an FBI interview report show she remained involved anyway.
According to the referral, Choi told FBI agents in July that she did “not have any kind of role in the investigation.”
The defense cites an internal message in which she asked whether a colleague could be added “to the IRL team to help move it along.” Documents obtained by the defense allegedly show she also asked for the name of the FBI agent on the case and kept a case tracker that listed the Shafi investigation.
The underlying emails were filed under seal, so the public cannot inspect the original documents or their full context. No court has ruled that Choi operated under a conflict of interest.
Cully Stimson of the Heritage Foundation, himself a former federal prosecutor, told Fox News Digital that criminal referrals of this kind are rare. “If their allegations end up being true, there was spillage,” he said, adding that it “could result in the entire office being conflicted.”
Stimson also cautioned against attributing Choi’s alleged conduct to the Biden administration more broadly.
Shafi’s defense has a strong incentive to discredit the case against him, and the Justice Department has no obligation to act on the referral.
Choi has not been charged with any crime or disciplined for professional misconduct. She did not respond to a request for comment, and t
