All posts tagged "Scams"

Telemarketing tycoon Richard Zeitlin, who could spend the rest of his life in prison for allegedly defrauding untold numbers of political and charitable donors, is begging a federal judge to free him from what his lawyer describes as “intolerable” pretrial jail conditions.

The conditions at New York City’s Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., are so dire that they “substantially impair [Zeitlin’s] ability to prepare for trial,” attorney Joshua L. Dratel wrote January 2 to U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan.

Dratel cites terrible food, inadequate phone and computer access, lack of access to Advil for back pain, a facility lockdown and an inability to obtain new T-shirts and underwear from the jail commissary. ...

This article originally appeared in OpenSecrets. Sign up for their weekly newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

The media’s most popular campaign finance stories often focus on where political money comes from. Stories about “dark money” groups and straw donor schemes continue to emerge, calling attention to opaque contributors and the special interests behind them.

But the spotlight is often less focused on where that money goes – how it is managed and spent. Exploring political spending is important because it can unveil fraudulent fundraising schemes, such as so-called scam PACs....

Unless Donald Trump’s legal defense fund is being run out of an apartment in Wheaton, Ill., and its email address carries the extension “opayq.com,” scammers are on the hunt to punk loyal supporters of the former president.

On Monday morning, a day after the New York Times reported that Trump was creating a legal defense fund to cover the bills of witnesses and defendants, a person (or people) filed separate paperwork with the Federal Election Commission to create the “Donald Trump Legal Defense Fund”.

Other hallmarks of it being a scam? The listed custodian of records and treasurer for the Donald Trump Legal Defense Fund gave an address in Downers Grove, Ill., that tracks back to a building that houses a “workspace and social lounge designed for suburban professionals”....