Former top Trump aide Steve Bannon was on Thursday arrested and charged along with three others for defrauding hundreds of thousands of donors in a Mexico border wall fundraising campaign -- a blow to the Republican incumbent.
The online crowdfunding campaign known as"We Build the Wall" raised more than $25 million, prosecutors said, which the defendants said would be used on construction but was instead used for their own profit.
Manhattan federal prosecutors said Bannon, the organization's founder Brian Kolfage, Andrew Badolato and Timothy Shea"received hundreds of thousands of dollars in donor funds from We Build the Wall, which they each used in a manner inconsistent with the organization's public representations." Kolfage, a 38-year-old based in Florida, had vowed that all funds raised would go to the wall and he would not take compensation -- but according to the indictment, he took more than $350,000 for his own use and worked to hide his actions.After calling the effort a"volunteer organization," Bannon, 66, received over $1 million of the donations which he funneled through a non-profit he controlled, using some of it for his personal expenses, prosecutors said.
"Not only did they lie to donors, they schemed to hide their misappropriation of funds by creating sham invoices and accounts to launder donations and cover up their crimes, showing no regard for the law or the truth," said Philip Bartlett, head of New York's division of the US Postal Inspection Service which worked on the investigation.
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