Trump adviser Steve Bannon and his buddy Brian Kolfage launch a money laundering scheme to defraud gullible Americans of millions of dollars.
The scheme starts with a GoFundMe campaign that asks supporters of Donald Trump to help fund the wall at the U.S.-Mexico border (since Mexico obviously isn’t going to pay for it). The GoFundMe is later accompanied by a website touting that the first part of the wall has been built.
And it has, but it didn’t cost the $25 million that Americans donated. Bannon and Kolfage faked invoices and contracts with non-existent vendors to cover up that a lot of the money was used for their own purposes.
Bannon, who served in Trump’s 2016 campaign and White House, received over $1 million himself, using some to secretly pay co-defendant, Brian Kolfage, the founder of the project, and to cover hundreds of thousands of dollars of Bannon’s personal expenses.
According to the indictment, Bannon promised that 100% of the donated money would be used for the project, but the defendants collectively used hundreds of thousands of dollars in a manner inconsistent with the organization’s public representations.
Associated Press
On August 20, 2020, Steve Bannon and Brian Kolfage are charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
The three miles of wall that the campaign claims to have built are actually the work of Fisher Industries, which has received around $2 billion in government contracts to build Trump’s wall.
Sources
https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2020-08-20/ex-white-house-adviser-steve-bannon-arrested-in-fraud-scam
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/steve-bannon-arrested-fraud-charges-border-wall-scheme/
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/the-rise-and-fall-of-we-build-the-wall-catch-up-on-tpms-coverage
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/21/us/gofundme-wall-border-border-mexico.html
https://webuildthewall.us/optin/
Photo: Gage Skidmore