Bucks County man faces up to 20 years in federal prison for faking a super PAC and donors
Christopher Richardson, 37, of Langhorne, falsely claimed to the Federal Elections Commission that his PAC spent millions of dollars on ads it never bought — with money from people who don’t exist.
A Bucks County man faces up to 20 years in prison for creating a political action committee that falsely claimed it raised and spent millions of dollars during the 2020 election to support Democratic candidates for the U.S. Senate.
Christopher Richardson, 37, of Langhorne, pleaded guilty Thursday in a Washington, D.C., federal court to two fraud-related charges for creating a fake super PAC. The PAC filed documents with the Federal Election Commission, claiming to have spent millions of dollars on ads that were never bought and paid for with money raised from people who don’t exist.
Richardson will be sentenced on June 13.
Jarrett Colby, a Washington-based attorney representing Richardson, declined to comment.
Politico in 2020 first identified the phantom super PAC, called Americans for Progressive Action USA, by contacting a number of organizations the PAC said it purchased advertising from. All of the groups said they’d never heard of the PAC and had no records of doing business with it.
In February of this year, prosecutors charged the Lower Bucks County man as the person behind the fake PAC and its made-up transactions, according to court documents.
A Department of Justice news release said that Richardson, in March 2020, used fictional names to create the PAC. He then allegedly submitted a falsified report to the FEC, claiming the PAC raised $4.8 million from three fictional people from Texas, including an American Civil Liberties Union “attorney investor” that Politico found had no association with the group.
Richardson then falsely reported to the FEC that the PAC had spent $1.5 million on ad and media buys, and after Politico’s investigation, claimed the PAC refunded the $4.8 million in nonexistent donations.
Richardson also allegedly used one of the PAC’s fictional donor’s names to get a credit card and use it for about 200 transactions, prosecutors said. He pleaded guilty to making a false entry in a record and device fraud.
Staff writer Jeremy Roebuck contributed to this report.