2 Florida Men Plead Guilty in ‘We Build the Wall’ Fundraiser Scheme

Benton Stevens, 7, and Brian Kolfage, founder of We Build the Wall, cut the ribbon at the official ceremony for the new half-mile section of border fence built from donations, at Sunland Park, N.M., on May 30, 2019. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

Two Florida men pleaded guilty on April 21 in connection with their roles in defrauding hundreds of thousands of people who donated money to a project to build a border wall, the Department of Justice announced.

Brian Kolfage, 39, and Andrew Badolato, 57, each pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

Kolfage also pleaded guilty to tax and wire fraud charges filed by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Florida.

They are both scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 6, 2022, by District Judge Analisa Torres.

The two men are accused of pocketing donations from the “We Build the Wall” campaign which raised more than $25,000,000 to build a wall along the southern border of the United States.

According to the indictment, beginning in December 2018 the two men, along with others, created the online crowdfunding campaign via GoFundMe.

However, they would go on to defraud hundreds of thousands of donors, including those in New York, in connection with the online crowdfunding campaign.

In an effort to get members of the public to donate to the campaign, Kolfage falsely claimed that he would “not take a penny in salary or compensation” and that “100 percent of the funds raised ... would be used in the ‘execution of our mission and purpose,’” prosecutors said.

But the two men, along with others instead kept the donations, using them “in a manner inconsistent with the organization’s public representations,” prosecutors said.

According to the indictment, Kolfage spent more than $350,000 of the donations on personal expenses, including home renovations, cosmetic surgery, a luxury SUV, a golf cart, and payments toward a boat, jewelry, personal tax payments, and credit card debt.

To conceal the payments taken from donations, Kolfage, Badolato, and others “devised a scheme to route those payments from We Build the Wall to Kolfage indirectly,” according to the indictment.

They did this by using fake invoices and “vendor” agreements, among other methods, to ensure that the scheme remained “completely confidential” prosecutors said, pointing to a text message that Kolfage sent to Badolato in which he stated that the payment arrangement was kept on a “need to know” basis.

The two men were indicted alongside former President Donald Trump’s adviser, Steve Bannon, who pleaded not guilty and denied any wrongdoing.

Bannon pleaded not guilty and said the charges amounted to a “political hit job." He was pardoned by then-President Trump in his final days in office.

Prosecutors said that Bannon, through a non-profit organization under his control received over $1 million from the scheme, some of which he used to cover hundreds of thousands of dollars of personal expenses.

“I knew what I was doing was wrong and a crime,” Kolfage, an Air Force veteran and amputee who was injured in a 2004 explosion in Iraq, told the judge on Thursday, CNN reports.

Timothy Shea, a fourth man charged in connection with the fundraising scheme, has pleaded not guilty. He is set to go to trial in May.

The Epoch Times has contacted lawyers for Kolfage and Badolato for comment.