We have all heard the stories about how Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is a scam artist connoisseur. We’ve also heard from his supporters who see his tactics as those of a successful business person.
However, it appears that he and his followers are now getting a taste of their own medicine.
A man named Ian Hawes, a 25 year-old from Maryland, has developed a scheme that has helped him dupe over 20,000 unsuspecting donors. He has received over 1 million dollars over the course of the presidential election.
In the first three weeks of operation, Hawes’ American Horizons PAC spent approximately 108,000 dollars on Facebook ads. He advertised a chance to win “Dinner with Donald Trump” and received around 350,000 dollars.
The largest portion of the money was 133,000 dollars and went to Hawes’ personal company CartSoft LLC. Federal records show that Hawe’s claimed this money was going to be used for “media” and “media purchasing.” However, CartSoft’s website describes itself as an online-payment processing platform.
This, however, is not even the most shocking news.
What is truly mind-blowing is that, since its launch, Hawes’ PAC has raised over 1 million dollars and has given nothing to the Trump campaign. Many of the donors who gave money have no idea about any of this.
According to federal filings, 156 people have donated 200 dollars or more to Hawes’ PAC. Reporters at Politico tried contacting many of them and were able to speak to eleven different donors. Each one of them thought they were donating to the actual Trump campaign and not some unrelated PAC.
One of the donors contacted was Mary Pat Kulina. She owns a paper-shredding company in Baltimore, Maryland and donated 265 dollars to Hawes’ PAC. She, and most of the other donors, was unaware that she had given to a PAC and not directly to the Trump campaign.
When speaking with Politico, she expressed outrage at the situation. She said:
“I feel ripped off and taken advantage of. This is horrible. That was not my intent. This is robbery. I want my money back and I want them to add up what they stole from people and give it to Donald Trump.”
But of course the dinner scheme was only the beginning. After the success of his previous PAC, Hawes started another website called crookedhillary2016.org. He then began promoting a contest designed to have Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s security clearance revoked.
The goal was to raise 1 million dollars from small donors to help fight against crooked Hillary and her lies. As of August 28, 2016, Hawes had raised 1.1 million dollars from 21,253 donors. More than 410,000 people have signed up for the dinner contest. This gives him an enormous amount of contact information that he can use to generate money in the future.
Of course, Hawes is maintaining his innocence despite not giving a dime to the Trump campaign. He asserts that the Trump campaign has never contacted his PAC and asked them to stop using his name. When asked if he was guilty of defrauding his donors he said:
“I applaud anyone that wants to dig into our financials, but they’re looking at the wrong political organization.”
While Hawes’ declaration of innocence may fool some, the majority of us see him for who he truly is. The only problem is that he will more than likely get away with this deception.
FEC commissioner Anne Ravel spoke about how sad it was that people were being deceived into giving money. However, she also acknowledged that the FEC is too powerless when it comes to combating fraud. She was quoted saying:
“That’s the frustration I have, that there’s very little recourse. People give money thinking it’s going to go to a particular person or a particular cause, and it’s a consumer protection issue as far as I’m concerned.”
Issues like these are exactly the reason why we need a Democrat in the White House. They are the only party that has put campaign finance reform as a high priority.
They are also more inclined to up financial regulations and increase the penalties for organizations that are caught cheating. All of these things might have an impact on future political elections. People will be free to donate to campaigns and know that they aren’t getting swindled by a con artist.
Although, I do have to admit, it is wonderfully ironic that supporters of the original con-man Trump are being duped in such an obvious way. It seems like they are being punished for continually praising a man who has consistently hurt people over and over again.
Here is a video of Megyn Kelly exposing Donald Trump’s university scam. A scam that has obviously been repeated by people like Mr. Hawes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xffgl45LveY
Featured image is a screengrab from American Horizons donation web site.
