Veteran Who Launched A Multimillion-Dollar Effort To Build A Border Wall Has Agreed To Plead Guilty
Brian Kolfage, an Iraq War veteran who launched a multimillion-dollar crowdfunding effort to build a private border wall, has agreed to plead guilty to fraud charges after prosecutors say he surreptitiously took hundreds of thousands of dollars from the fundraiser.
Before launching We Build the Wall, Kolfage had made a living by peddling right-wing misinformation on social media, eventually leading to him being banned on Facebook. In a letter filed in the federal Southern District of New York, federal prosecutors said that in addition to the attempt and conspiracy to commit wire fraud charges, Kolfage also agreed to plead guilty to federal charges of lying on his 2019 taxes.
According to prosecutors, Kolfage first claimed to have earned $63,574 that year and then filed a correction claiming $300,000, but officials claimed Kolfage's income for that year "were materially in excess of that amount."
Kolfage collected the funds despite claiming that he wouldn't earn "a penny in salary or compensation" for the massive crowdfunding effort, but federal prosecutors alleged he and others with the organization arranged a scheme in which he secretly took more than $350,000 from the donations by using nonprofits and shell companies.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/the-veteran-who-launched-a-multimillion-dollar-effort-to-build-a-border-wall-has-agreed-to-plead-guilty-to-fraud-charges/ar-AAVYJx6
What a surprise. It was a scam.
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