Art of Horseplay the Life of a Handicapper Paperback by Bohms

By Roger Sollenberger, Salon

A super PAC that claims to advocate for wounded veterans raised millions of dollars this year, only spent only $18,000 of it on political activity. The residue of the money was spun off to administrative and marketing services, including to three companies belonging to 1 person — a sometime long-shot Democratic congressional candidate, self-published writer, certified nutrition-label reader and serial hustler in East Tennessee named Alan Bohms.

The organization, chosen American Wounded Veterans PAC, bears hallmarks of what campaign finance watchdogs call a "scam PAC" — a for-profit fundraising vehicle that professes to advocate for a crusade just makes no clear promise on how it will spend the money raised, and in reality intends to continue most of it, or pay it out to affiliated contractors.

Bohms, along with his lawyer, Matthew Fisher, appears to exist at the centre of a sprawling, intertwined network of super PAC and nonprofit scammers offset revealed in 2019 in a series of exposés about a group called Heroes United PAC.

Bohms, however, has never had his proper noun on a PAC and was never named in those stories. Instead he feeds off of the PACs, 1 operator in a large network of shadowy marketing companies where affiliated PACs shuttle almost all of the funds they raise.

Following the public exposure and an out-of-court settlement with Montgomery Canton, Maryland, that network appears to take simply shuttered its old PACs and started afresh in early on 2020.

A Salon investigation indicates that Bohms and Fisher remained cardinal figures in this venture. The network itself seems to have stayed intact, equally has the larger, even more mysterious network of untraceable telemarketing companies above them that take an fifty-fifty larger cut.

Tens of millions

Over the concluding three years, that larger network has pulled in tens of millions of dollars for the PACs in the name of charitable causes. But the groups plowed almost all of their millions into fundraising and marketing companies, including paying sham companies run past people in their ain network.

"Scam PACs" exploit an ill-defined space between federal campaign finance and state charity laws: Political activeness committees (PACs) operate outside the laws that regulate charities — for example, officially registering with land governments, publicly disclosing their executives, reporting their expenses and so on.

Scam PACs correspond "a mode for them to get around the charity laws — that'southward exactly what they're doing," Stuart Discount, master executive of the Professional Association for Customer Engagement, a trade association for straight marketers, told Reuters for a special written report on scam PACs published concluding January, which touched on the Heroes United scheme.

But scam PACs don't behave like normal political activeness committees, either. Instead of political advocacy focused on specific issues or an ideological calendar, they solicit coin for supposedly charitable causes — children in poverty, cancer victims, police enforcement groups, firefighters, wounded soldiers and the like — and tell donors, often in passing, that part of their efforts involve lobbying politicians about the cause.

None of the PACs mentioned in this story announced to have registered as lobbying organizations with the federal authorities.

Because super PACs can raise and spend unlimited amounts of coin with little regulatory oversight, scams tin turn tidy profits. In 2018, federal prosecutors indicted 2 brothers who operated a network of right-wing scam PACs with names similar Americans for Law Enforcement PAC, Life and Freedom PAC and Republican Majority Campaign PAC, which over the course of 10 years had bilked donors out of $50 million.

Indictment

That indictment declared that "less than 1% of all donor money to the PACs was spent on political contributions." The remainder went to fundraising efforts and into the two men's pockets, resulting in a $1.two million fine.

That appears similar and perhaps smaller in scale to United Heroes and the larger network that Bohms, Fisher and their associates are in, which netted tens of millions of dollars this year solitary.

American Wounded Veterans, for instance, raised $2.5 1000000 from donors in 2020, co-ordinate to its latest Federal Election Committee filing. Just the group spent just 0.7% of those funds on what qualifies as legitimate political activity, in the FEC's eyes: a single $18,000 payment this June for ads to back up Rep. Charlie Crist, a Florida Democrat.

On its website, American Wounded Veterans PAC says that its mission is "to transform our nation'southward capital letter past electing a new generation of leaders who will put people over politics." Crist would not appear to fit the mission: He is in no sense a member of a "new generation," but an old hand, a 64-yr-one-time career politician and one-time Florida governor whose committee assignments in the House have nothing to practise with veterans affairs.

While it appears incommunicable to trace the PAC — the phone number and address that its current treasurer, Michael Simpson, reported to the FEC are both virtual — it'southward possible to trace that advertising payment. That coin went into the pocket of the aforementioned Alan Bohms, a Knoxville-area resident with a colorful history and an apparently diverse set of interests, who was himself implicated in a number of multimillion-dollar scam PAC schemes final twelvemonth.

One of those groups had a name strikingly like to American Wounded Veterans: The American Coalition for Injured Veterans, which paid vast sums to Bohms' former company, Tampa Media Marketing.

Heros United PAC

Heroes United PAC spent a full of more than $462,000 on Tampa Media's services between 2018 and February 2020, FEC records show. During that same time frame, the PAC spent simply $147,000 on legitimate political activity. That'southward just one-tertiary of what Bohms' company fabricated in that time, and a mere 0.1% of the group's total fundraising.

In fact, Tampa Media pulled in a combined $ii.5 million between 2018 and 2020 cycles, according to data from Open Secrets.

This yr, Bohms started fresh, ditching Tampa Media and creating a new company with a generic, essentially invisible moniker: "Campaign Marketing Inc." That company was the eventual recipient of the $18,000 advertising purchase from the American Wounded Veterans PAC — which itself had as well been created in Jan.

That wasn't all Bohms earned from American Wounded Veterans' innumerable small donors — Campaign Marketing Inc. performed a number of other services for the PAC this year, plain $129,000 worth.

Additionally, Bohms had registered Campaign Marketing Inc. to do business organization under two other, equally generic aliases — Prestige Tax & Payroll and Insight Data Management — both of which took payments from American Wounded Veterans.

All told, Bohms took in $173,000 for his services through those companies merely this year — all purportedly to run some ads for an unopposed Florida congressman two months before a canceled primary.

No other political group reported paying any of those 3 companies.

American Wounded Veterans PAC

Nonetheless, American Wounded Veterans PAC has about $2.3 million in 2020 fundraising to business relationship for. Where did it come up from? Virtually all of the PAC'southward receipts are "unitemized," meaning the money came in the form of contributions of $200 or less, then the PAC does not have to disembalm those donors. (A great many scam PAC donors are elderly people who quite likely believe they are giving to legitimate charities.)

Campaign finance and government ethics law adept Brett Kappel told Salon this fits the scam PAC pattern.

"1 of the more pernicious effects of the Supreme Court's Citizens United conclusion has been an explosion in the number of super PAC scams," Kappel said. "Since super PACs tin solicit and accept contributions in unlimited amounts, they have become a favorite vehicle for the unscrupulous — many of whom previously ran charity scams."

"Fortunately, the Justice Department has responded to the proliferation of super PAC scams and has successfully prosecuted many scam PAC operators for post and wire fraud over the past few years," Kappel added.

And where did the money go?

That ostensibly legitimate $eighteen,000 expense appears dubious on a closer look. This twelvemonth Crist ran unopposed in the Democratic primary for Florida's 13th congressional district, which was originally scheduled for August but ultimately canceled.

Information technology is unclear why Campaign Marketing Inc, spent $18,000 on advertising to support Crist in June. Bohms would not answer that question — although he said he formerly lived in Crist's district, in and around St. Petersburg, Florida.

It is also unclear how Crist feels almost a sketchy newcomer PAC using his campaign as a vehicle to raise millions of dollars in the proper noun of wounded U.S. troops. His campaign did not reply to Salon'due south detailed questions about the PAC, the ads or Bohms.

No comment

Reached for comment, Bohms denied he had whatever direct connection to American Wounded Veterans PAC, though he did say that the group paid him to "do some work."

"I don't intendance to take role in your article," he said, then hung upwardly.

While Bohms appears to accept made good money from American Wounded Veterans, the overwhelming majority of the PAC'south cash was spent on telemarketing. The companies involved have generic, forgettable names similar "Political Marketing Services," "Market Process Group" and "Campaign Vendor Direction Inc.," which make cyberspace searches difficult, but withal pull in millions of dollars a twelvemonth.

Many of these entities appear to be new, and it seems likely they are all office of a single network.

For instance, Campaign Vendor Direction is a company in Gulfport, Florida, founded this April by John DiGregorio, who lives near Bohms' one-time home, in Pinellas Canton, Florida — Charlie Crist'south district. (Florida state records evidence that in 1993 Bohms registered in Pinellas County equally a convicted criminal. He was subsequently charged in Florida with aggravated bombardment, but the instance was apparently dismissed afterward four years.)

Federal filings reveal a tiered structure, with a level of entities above Bohms that receive massive PAC payments for vague marketing-related services. Those bigger entities, nevertheless, are better at hiding their tracks.

Have Political Marketing Services LLC, which is untraceable with any tool curt of a subpoena. The company appears to be one of the biggest fish of the PAC network's 2020 scam bicycle, pulling in millions of dollars for marketing services this year lone.

Wyoming company

The company was created in Wyoming but last year, simply FEC records show that in that fourth dimension it has taken in massive revenues — some in lump sum payments up to $311,000 — merely from simply iv PAC clients, with thematic names: Security in America PAC (which terminated this April after raising $iii million and spending $3,000), Constabulary Enforcement for a Safer America PAC, American Wounded Veterans PAC and the Firefighters Support Association PAC.

One of those clients, Law Enforcement for a Safer America, pulled in more than than $12.3 one thousand thousand this year, filings testify, but spent just $400,000 — or 3% — on political activity. Information technology paid more than that, $421,947, to a New Bailiwick of jersey company called The Contact Eye, Inc., which made a full of $1.2 million in the 2020 election cycle and operates a artificial website with a telephone number that appears tied to a modem or fax line.

While Political Marketing Services LLC appears impossible to trace — information technology is registered nether an anonymous agent with the admirably literal appellation Wyoming Registered Agent — an Alabama-based company likewise chosen Political Marketing Services LLC received $395,800 in coronavirus small business organization loans this spring.

The visitor told the government it was physically located at 9340 Helena Road in Birmingham, Alabama — just that address is a UPS store.

A LinkedIn page exists for Political Marketing Services, which appears to have ii employees in Alabama. Its supposed website, political-marketing.cyberspace, consists of a unmarried line of text attributed to an "old Chinese proverb": "When the wind of alter blows, some build walls, others build windmills."

The site's architect is a political marketing researcher from Germany. He did not reply to Salon'south request for comment.

Mailboxes, etc.

A reporter in Cheyenne sent Salon photos taken of Wyoming Registered Agent's accost — a nondescript two-level brick building that hosts mailboxes for dozens of corporate entities from across the country, as well as a skeleton staff of authoritative workers who populate the mostly empty suites.

At the reporter'southward request, a member of the edifice's staff chosen Wyoming Registered Agent to inquire well-nigh Political Marketing Services. She quickly hung up, telling the reporter that the woman at the other end of the line would not talk over the company.

It is unclear whether Bohms is connected directly to Political Marketing Services. He refused to answer multiple detailed follow-up questions. A Wisconsin lawyer named Matt Fisher, who says he represents Bohms, called Salon to ask what the story was nigh, only declined to discuss anything on the tape.

Fisher'south bio claims he is a lath member of a law enforcement advocacy charity called Band of Blueish. That charity's website, withal, does non list him among its lath members. IRS records betoken the charity reports less than $25,000 revenue annually.

Fisher told Salon during the call that he did not correspond Bohms in connection with election police force, which seems far-fetched. Concluding twelvemonth, Fisher represented Zachary Bass, the treasurer for Heroes United PAC, and Matthew Greenlee, the group'southward director and a close associate of Bohms, in their dispute with Montgomery Canton, Maryland. That case, a double scam carve up between the PAC and a related clemency chosen the Volunteer Firefighters Association, was covered past multiple national media outlets, and the group ended up settling, agreeing to end solicitations in the county and refund any donations.

That year, Bass was listed as treasurer for five PACs. This twelvemonth he is listed on none.

"It's pretty rare to catch telemarketers," Eric Friedman, the managing director of Montgomery Canton's Office of Consumer Protection, told the Center for Public Integrity at the time. "We think it'south a big news story because even though this happened in Montgomery County, it illustrates a nationwide problem where fake PACs are engaging in simulated marketing for fake charities."

Claims undermined

FEC filings also undermine Bohms' merits that he was not connected to American Wounded Veterans. The treasurer of Firefighters Support Association (which spent 6% of its $3.i 1000000 revenue on political efforts) was too the original treasurer of American Wounded Veterans PAC: Mark Phillips.

While it is not articulate whether these any of these LLCs or PACs raise funds for charities — and collect fees for the piece of work — coexisting prove abounds.

Phillips, the treasurer of Firefighters Back up Brotherhood, also happens to be a member of a 501c(3) charity run by Bohms called the Volunteer Firefighter Alliance.

And amidst the Volunteer Firefighter Alliance's other officials is Matthew Greenlee, director of Heroes United PAC, who was paid more than $38,000 for his work with the group in the 2018 financial yr, according to IRS records.

This charity has had its legitimacy chosen into question several times, and each time Bohms has defended it affably.

It appears from IRS filings that Bohms, a volunteer fireman himself, started the VFA (website here) in 2014. The group, which also works under the name Firefighter Cancer Brotherhood (well-nigh-identical website here), has come nether scrutiny multiple times from local sheriffs every bit an apparent scam. (It received a GuideStar "transparency" title in 2017.)

But last March, for instance, the volunteer Lancaster Canton Fire and Rescue Department, in South Carolina, cautioned residents against responding to VFA solicitations, proverb that local officials believed the letters were a scam: "No funds that are sent to the Texas render address listed would go towards Lancaster County firefighters," the section head told the Lancaster News.

(The VFA website posts this disclaimer: When y'all receive a pledge confirmation in the postal service, yous might notice that you are asked to send your contribution to a unlike address than our corporate office. That address is the mail processing signal for our fundraising campaign.)

Tax filings

A review of the organization's revenue enhancement filings shows that in 2019 the VFA pocketed more than $v meg in contributions, and managed to spend almost that exact same corporeality — just not on clemency work: Well-nigh all of its income went to telemarketing and fundraising efforts. Bohms paid himself $93,864.

In fact, VFA paid more than $two.two 1000000 of its private contributions out to a notorious New Jersey-based telemarketing heart called Outreach Calling. In September, the Federal Merchandise Commission joined the attorneys general of four states in an expansive federal lawsuit filed confronting Outreach Calling in the Southern District of New York, alleging that the visitor had scammed consumers out of millions of dollars as principal fundraisers for numerous "sham charities" that were the subjects of legal activeness.

Outreach Calling has been permanently banned from clemency fundraising.

The founder and top executive at Outreach, Mark Gelvan, was connected to a company that specialized in PAC fundraising, called Market Process Group, in a January 2020 Reuters special report. Like Political Marketing Services, that visitor is impossible to trace without a court subpoena. But during the 2018 and 2020 cycles, Marketplace Process Group made about $eighteen million from political organizations, co-ordinate to OpenSecrets, including from American Wounded Veterans, the Firefighters Support Association, Heroes United and the American Brotherhood for Disabled Children.

Just the VFA claims to offering legitimate charitable services, and its website is unusually heavy on specific information, which it presents upfront as proof of the group'south work.

The first pieces of information about the charity that viewers see are the "over 47,911,770 people" that Nielsen suggests may have been reached past the group'south radio PSAs; its recruitment mailings to "over 8,964,664 people"; the 423 cable outlets and "over 700 radio stations" that information technology has sent PSAs; and the declared 949 people that "have contacted us wanting to get involved with their local Fire Section."

The vast majority of that work seems to involve dumping mass amounts of unsolicited direct mail into the world. (For example: "We have mailed out 115,700 Thanks Cards nationally to our Volunteer Firefighters; Shipped 'Give thanks You' bundles to 1,544 Burn Departments across the United States.")

The site too says the grouping offers a no-cost life insurance program to volunteer firefighters (a total 25 volunteer firefighters died in 2019), besides as a national crisis hotline: 1-844-550-HERO, "24 hours a day, seven days a week."

Crunch hotline hangups

Salon called the VFA crisis hotline, and selected the "suicide prevention" option. The telephone call was redirected and immediately dropped. Salon called back and selected the "substance corruption" option. That call was also redirected and dropped. No general operators were available to help a 3rd attempt.

When Salon informed Bohms most the hang-ups in a text message, he replied, "I will bank check into that. Cheers."

Salon tried the hotline again several days subsequently, with the same results.

The VFA also offers another connection between Bohms and Heroes United PAC.

In 2017, Bohms disclosed his connexion to Heroes United in a phone call with a man who believed he had been the target of an automated telephone call from a grouping chosen the Volunteer Firefighters Association — nominally, a unlike entity from the Volunteer FirefighterBrotherhood, and the one involved in the scam that Heroes United settled with Montgomery County.

Fisher is the common lawyer between the groups.

The art of horseplay

One other Volunteer Firefighter Alliance board member took a $93,864 salary: Robert Kesterson, who in 2016 gave Bohms a five-star book review on Amazon, apparently the merely 1 he has received.

In reaction to Bohms' cocky-published racetrack gambling advice book, "The Fine art of Horseplay: The Life of a Handicapper," Kesterson wrote:

I have been around horse racing my entire life, even grew upwards in a thorough staff of life facility. Got into wagering on races the last few years. Mr. Bohm's system is a well known in horse betting circles. I was surprised at how many "secrets" he turned loose of in this well written book. Run across you at the races!

Some other review of that book says, "If you got this book gratuitous, information technology's still not worth reading!"

"The back of the book and clarification leads you to believe this is a book on how to handicap horses, what to look for in horses and picking horses to bet on. It does not!!" the reviewer warns. "This is a horrible book."

That review is followed by another, which reads, "The first reviewer is largely correct. Except for a Show Bettor Organisation, this book offers no data on how to handicap horses."

Bohms has self-published a number of other books, including "The Squirrel Commander: Guide to Modest Game Hunting," "Swallow Less CRAP, Eat More Nutrient: A Paleo Crockpot Cookbook" and "Big Al'due south Golf for Beginners," which can be purchased for $902.81.

Big Al'due south hot dogs

Bohms also has a company chosen Big Al'south Hot Dogs. His LinkedIn page features certificates indicating that he completed courses in "Understanding the Dates on Nutrient Labels" and "General Nutrition: Abdomen Fat" through online classes provided by Texas A&M University.

Bohms originally hails from a pocket-size boondocks in northern Illinois, but a person familiar with his family unit told Salon he had left for Florida decades ago after he was told he had fathered a kid. His girl had disabilities from birth, the person said, simply Bohms was out of the movie and unreachable. 2 years agone, after a about 30-twelvemonth search, the female parent constitute Bohms through his Twitter account. He has not been responsive, fifty-fifty afterward his estranged daughter reached out personally. "He wants goose egg to do with her," the person said. Bohms, who besides has a family in Tennessee, has a iii-year-sometime grandson he does not know about, the source told Salon.

"He has no business running a charitable organization," the person said. "He's a crook, a liar, and waste product of fourth dimension."

Bohms' brief political career was besides peculiar. In 2016, he ran for Congress as a Democrat in Tennessee's 1st congressional district, which a regional political operative told Salon has been "Republican-held since before the Civil War."

The bar to get on a election in Tennessee is extraordinarily depression. "It'southward 25 signatures full. Anyone can get on," the operative said. "It's bullshit and needs to be changed."

On the ballot

Bohms got on the ballot, and faced no other candidates in the Democratic master. In the general election, he won 15.4% of the vote against Rep. Phil Roe, the Republican incumbent.

It is unclear why Bohms ran. His campaign commission raised no money, and Tennessee voter rolls do non disembalm party affiliation. However, Bohms now regularly identifies himself upfront as a quondam congressional candidate. (No Autonomous candidate had even bothered to run in the commune in 2014.)

To the extent Bohms had a entrada platform, information technology was vaguely libertarian in tone. The E Tennessean characterized him as "a self-described family unit homo and volunteer fire-eater who stands for the rights of marginalized groups, wants to get large money out of politics and is a proud supporter of second subpoena rights."

He criticized the outsized influence of coin in politics on his campaign website:

We should non be elected based on the corporeality of money nosotros accept to spend on an election. After all, because one Candidate has $500,000 to spend and the other but has $ii,000, does that make the wealthier Candidate the better man for the job? Information technology definitely means he is less in tune with the needs of the working class. In a democracy nosotros should accept the right to elect people on their ideas. The biggest problem I have with this is that these wealthy politicians believe they have the answers to our problems. The job title is "Representative," which means instead of them telling u.s. what they desire to exercise, they should listen and the enquire usa want nosotros want them to exercise. So become to Washington and "represent" our views and opinions. That would be the true definition of the word representative.

As for Bohms himself, FEC records testify that he has only ever fabricated 1 federal campaign donation in his entire life: to Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a fiercely conservative Republican. Bohms gave her campaign and PAC $iv,700 in 2018 — less than the maximum allowable amount.

Roger Sollenberger is a staff writer at Salon. Follow him on Twiter @SollenbergerRC.

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Source: https://www.floridabulldog.org/2020/12/man-at-center-of-shadowy-multimillion-dollar-scam-pac-network/