Colorado Man Arrested For Fraud With Former White House Advisor
Timothy Shea of Castle Rock, Colorado, has made national headlines for his involvement in a fundraising scam called "We Build The Wall".
Shea is one of four people indicted, including Brian Kolfage, Andrew Badolato and Donald Trump's former White House advisor, Steve Bannon.
On Thursday morning, Forbes included these excerpts in the 'key facts' section of their website:
- "Kris Kobach, a former Kansas secretary of state who acted as an advisor for We Build The Wall, told the New York Times in January 2019 that Trump gave his “blessing” to keep the fundraising campaign going."
- "Trump reacted to the news on Thursday, saying, 'I feel very badly. I haven't been dealing with him for a very long period of time. Haven't been dealing with him at all. Don't know anything about the project at all. It's a very sad thing by Mr. Bannon.'"
Shea was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, as reported by Fox 31 Denver.
The four men charged have allegedly received hundreds of thousand of dollars in donor funds, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney's Office:
“In particular, Kolfage covertly took for his personal use more than $350,000 in funds that donors had given to We Build the Wall, while Bannon, through a non-profit organization under his control (“Non-Profit-1”), received over $1 million from We Build the Wall, at least some of which Bannon used to cover hundreds of thousands of dollars in Bannon’s personal expenses. To conceal the payments to Kolfage from We Build the Wall, Kolfage, Bannon, and Shea devised a scheme to route those payments from We Build the Wall to Kolfage indirectly through Non-Profit-1 and a shell company under Shea’s control, among other avenues. They did so by using fake invoices and sham “vendor” arrangements, among other ways, to ensure, as Kolfage noted in a text message to Badolato, that his pay arrangement remained “confidential” and kept on a “need to know” basis.”
5 Times Fort Collins Grabbed National Headlines