THREAD about that SCOOP from the politics folks here at @publicintegrity: Scott Mackenzie has been a major DC player in political fundraising for years - and his name has come up repeatedly in news stories about his tactics. publicintegrity.org/federal-politi…
Today, @TheJusticeDept accused Mackenzie of filing "a number of materially false, fictitious and fraudulent statements and representations” to the FEC from 2011 to 2018 on behalf of two political action committees: Conservative StrikeForce and Conservative Majority Fund.
DOJ says Mackenzie engineered payments to "Person A" in Winchester-an umbrella salesperson who he went to school with-for work she didn't do. DOJ also says Mackenzie directed money from other PACs to pay the legal bills of Conservative StrikeForce using false invoices.
Mackenzie has for years served as treasurer of more than 50 political action committees — about a dozen of which purport to raise money for political and social causes, but spend most of the money they raise from donors on fundraising, salaries and overhead.
Mackenzie’s PACs are part of a trend. During the early 2000s, there were 7 PACs that raised money in small increments and spent most of it on fundraising, wages and administration. Now, there are 61 — more than half of which became active in 2017 or 2018.
Those 61 PACs collected $101 million in 2017 and 2018. @PublicIntegrity recently published an investigation into another major player in this world: Richard Zeitlin, a Las Vegas-based telemarketer who recently has shifted to political fundraising. publicintegrity.org/federal-politi…
The Department of Justice, which may criminally prosecute people who run PACs, is becoming somewhat more aggressive when it comes to investigating PACs that allegedly mislead donors.
On Friday, the DOJ requested a prison sentence of 33 months for Kyle Prall, an Austin man who created websites in 2015 and 2016 ostensibly supporting Trump, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. He raised more than $548,000 from 400 Americans and kept more than $200,000 for himself
In another case, H. Russell Taub, a 30-year-old Rhode Island man, was recently sentenced to 36 months in jail and will have to repay $1.1 million in restitution to the people who donated to his fraudulent political action committees.
In response to a November 2018 case, Geoffrey S. Berman, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York proclaimed: “This is the first-ever federal prosecution of fraudulent scam PACs, but it won’t be the last.”
