ScamPACs Are Diverting Hundreds of Millions of Dollars

by Steve Schear

Winning in Virginia, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and California last night sparks greater confidence that the pro-democracy movement can prevail in the midterms. That task will be much easier if we can clean up fundraising by Political Action Committees (PACs) that are diverting massive amounts of financial resources from our efforts. To its credit, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) now recognizes that the time has come to clamp down on ScamPACs.

On October 19, the DNC issued a statement announcing that it was going to address the ScamPAC problem: “Here at the DNC, we will keep working to hold bad actors in this space accountable.” The DNC’s new aggressive posture against unscrupulous PACs was a welcome step In the right direction by the Party’s national leadership.

ScamPACs raise money using false claims, fake matches, unauthorized images, and by claiming donations will benefit Democrats when they actually do little or nothing to help. They generally use emotional appeals to induce people to donate and then use most of the money for fundraising, overhead and payments to PAC operators.

In August and September, Stanford professor Adam Bonica wrote three articles about political fundraising that stirred up a storm and likely led to the DNC’s statement. The first article described how the consulting firm Mothership Strategies was helping unscrupulous PACs extract money from gullible donors with scammy texts. The second article showed how ScamPACs especially prey on seniors. The third article documents how fundraising costs have gone from 9% of the money raised in 2004 to 38% of the money raised this year.

Bonica’s research showed that hundreds of millions of dollars are being collected by PACs in the name of helping Democrats but not actually going to campaign activities. The vast majority of those funds come from the grassroots in small donations. As one grassroots leader said, “They are poisoning the well of Democratic donors.” ScamPACs breed annoyance, distrust, and negative feelings about the Democratic Party.

Effective PACs vs. ScamPACs

Bonica’s articles led to the creation of the “Scambusters,” a group of grassroots activists researching and documenting abuse of fundraising tools.

There are legitimate PACs doing high quality political work. The Scambusters are working on separating the wheat from the chaff. The results of their initial investigations aren’t pretty. Here are a couple of examples of how contributions intendeed to help Democrats win elections have gone elsewhere:

Win Blue USA

One clue to a ScamPAC is that it ends up in your spam folder. One Scambuster team member looked in his spam folder and found he was receiving two or more spam emails a day from Win Blue USA. When I mentioned the group, a friend told me she also gets multiple daily emails from Win Blue USA. She sent me one quoting Bernie Sanders, claiming a 300% match, an extremely common fraudulent pitch from ScamPACs.

Win Blue’s 2025 Federal Election Commission (FEC) reports show it received $1.1 million in contributions, almost all from donors of $1,000 or less. The spending report shows that Win Blue USA paid $731,744, 64% of those contributions, to PACtion Data, a fundraising operation. At least 80% of the money raised was spent on fundraising. Win Blue gave just 3% of the total raised, $35,000, to Congressional candidates and another PAC. Based on its FEC filings, Win Blue USA appears to primarily benefit PACtion.

DemocracyFirst PAC

PACs can be deceptive in many different ways. One of my recent texts was from the DemocracyFirst PAC asking me whether I was going to attend the No Kings protest. Whether I answered “yes” or “no,” it then took me to a webpage with an anti-Trump flavored “survey.”

The PAC then showed me this:

Reading the above, you would never know that last year the DemocracyFirst PAC made contributions to six Republicans running for the House of Representatives (Dan Newhouse (WA-4), Dave Joyce (OH-4), Don Bacon (NE-2), Marianette Miller-Meeks (IA-1), Brian Fitzpatrick (PA-8) and David Valadao (CA-22.) It also donated to Republican John Curtis’s successful campaign for the U.S. Senate and to the Republican Governance Group. Despite Democracy First’s anti-Trump rhetoric, the six GOP Representatives it helped elect have consistently supported the MAGA agenda.DemocracyFirst PAC appeals to those who want to support “moderates.” No progressive or radical MAGA candidates receive the PACs donations. Yet although it claims to be protecting democracy and opposed to Trump, it helped give Republicans control of the House.

Republicans Get Scammed, Too

It’s not just Democrats who gets scammed. Republican scamsters might even be worse than ours. One Scambuster member received an email from the Project 1776 PAC which claimed support from Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump, Jr., promising a 100X match. Project 1776 raised $7.5 million in the 2023-24 election cycle and spent 73% of it on fundraising.

The Campaign Legal Center uncovered two Republican PACs that were engaged in blatant fraud and self-dealing. One of them, Patriots for American Leadership, raised $1.4 million and diverted $730,000 to its treasurer. “The rest of the funds were plowed back into more robocalls for “fundraising,” the CLC reported.

Ways That You Can Be a Scambuster

ScamPACs are a plague on electoral politics. The time has come to clean up our donation systems.

1. Help us identify and stop Scam PACS. As Professor Bonica writes, we need Democratic party leaders to step up and take action to stop ScamPACs. The grassroots can help by documenting specific cases of fundraising abuse. The organizations described here are only the tip of a massive iceberg. If you know of a ScamPAC, let The Grassroots Connector know by adding a comment below, or by emailing thegrassrootsconnector@gmail.com. We’d especially like to see screenshots of scamtexts or emails. Help us stop the scamsters!
2. Volunteer to Research ScamPACs. There’s a lot of data about most PACs on websites of the FEC and OpenSecrets.org. We could use more volunteers figuring out which PACs are ScamPACs, and documenting their misdeeds. If you are interested in helping, email thegrassrootsconnector@gmail.com. We will provide training.
3. Report questionable cases to Act Blue. Act Blue has recently adopted new policies to help prevent fundraising spam and scam operations from using their platform. You can report questionable fundraising appeals to Act Blue using this How-To Doc.
4. Forward your spam text screenshots to the phone number 7726. That lets your phone service provider know that the text you are sending was spam.
5. Report spammy/scammy emails as spam to your email service provider.

Reprinted from The Grassroots Connector

Steve Schear is an organizer and writer from Oakland, CA, and part of the Scambuster team.