Thread by @bysarahkleiner

THREAD📢: I got a call today from a guy named Parker in Massachusetts. He wanted to tell me about a phone call he’d received not too long ago from Support America’s Police PAC.

The voice on the other end of Parker’s line was very persuasive. Aggressive. Convincing. The voice sounded like a human, but he realized after a while that he was talking to a very lifelike robot. supportleousa.org

Parker hung up and went down a rabbit hole to find out who was behind the phone call. He soon learned that Support America’s Police PAC is run by a man named Oliver Cappleman. olliecappleman.com

The PAC website makes this claim: “The Support America’s Police PAC is committed to endorsing in an election or re-election of Legislators that vigorously enact bills in Congress and the Senate that address the critical needs of our American Law Enforcement professionals.”

In reality, though, this relatively new political action committee has raised nearly $350,000 in 2021, and has spent almost all of that on administrative expenses and payroll. A slew of third-party vendors have raked in almost all of that cash. fec.gov/data/committee…

You might think, so what? It’s only $350,000. Allow me to put this in perspective.

In 2019, we wrote about Richard Zeitlin, a telemarketer who contracted with dozens of charities and PACs for fundraising. Zeitlin’s companies kept $133.1 M out of at least $153 M raised in the name of kids with cancer, police officers, etc. publicintegrity.org/politics/chari…

That’s just one guy. In 2017, I wrote about Mark Gelvan, whose telemarketing company raised more than $118 million on behalf of about two dozen charities. The company kept $106 million, leaving $12.2 million—or 10.3 percent—for its client charities.
publicintegrity.org/politics/chari…

Parker found me because I’ve written about Oliver Cappleman and his ties to Richard Zeitlin and so-called “scam PACs” before, such as Autism Hear Us Now PAC Inc., United Veterans Alliance of America PAC Inc., and Veterans Aid PAC Inc. publicintegrity.org/politics/chari…

Parker wanted to know if anything had been done about this problem. 📢“My bullshit detector is pretty good,” he said. “If I can almost get fooled, my grandma is going to open her checkbook.”📢

I told him that Gelvan had been banned from fundraising by the @FTC and four attorneys general in 2020, and the leader of three veterans scam organizations, who I wrote about in 2017, had also been banned and fined. publicintegrity.org/politics/telem… publicintegrity.org/politics/virgi…

But the call Parker got is Exhibit A that these phone solicitations from worthwhile-sounding PACs are still happening. People are still donating to orgs that essentially are shells for fundraisers. Very little of the money they donate–if any–goes to the people they wanted to help

What does this mean? Basically it means that one-off crack-downs by regulators aren’t exactly deterring telemarketers and PAC operators from raising money from unsuspecting donors.

My takeaway? Talk to your parents and peers and tell them to do research before they give money to any organization, even ones that sound like they legitimately care about people in need. #endofstory