A Colorado entrepreneur accused of funneling kickback cash from a charity that raised money to build a wall on the Mexican border committed “fraud, plain and simple,” prosecutors said in Manhattan Federal Court Tuesday.
Timothy Shea was in charge of a shell company that moved $20,000 of donations a month from the “We Build the Wall” fund to Brian Kolfage, a triple-amputee Air Force veteran who founded the campaign, which was controlled by former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, according to the feds.
“He [Shea] knew what they were doing was wrong and illegal,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Alison Moe. “You’re going to see the defendant’s own words. … You’ll see the messages in which they hatch the plan for stealing the money and paying illegal kickbacks.”
Shea, along with Kolfage, Bannon and Andrew Badolato were busted for the border wall scheme in 2020.
Their GoFundMe campaign — which promised every penny raised would be used to build a wall — took in $25 million from hundreds of thousands of people. Kolfage repeatedly told donors that he would “not take a penny in salary or compensation,” prosecutors said.
“It gave me confidence that he was going to do his best to commit to this cause. It just made me feel like I could get behind him,” said Nicole Keller, a witness from Pennsylvania who gave between $50 and $100 to the GoFundMe campaign.
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