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80-year-old man raises over $250K for Bernie, Beto. What he ACTUALLY did with the money is rather interesting.
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80-year-old man raises over $250K for Bernie, Beto. What he ACTUALLY did with the money is rather interesting.

There's some socialism at work — or something

Eighty-year-old John Pierre Dupont of California successfully raised money for Democratic presidential candidates Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Beto O'Rourke, but none of the money actually went to either candidate.

Instead, Dupont allegedly spent the money on his rent as well as the purchase of a Mercedes-Benz vehicle.

What are the details?

Officials arrested Dupont on Tuesday for reportedly setting up fake websites and political action committees to raise money for Sanders and O'Rourke.

Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York charged Dupont with wire fraud as well as identity theft after he fraudulently raised more than $250,000 for the Democratic candidates, as well as other Democratic candidates and causes.

According to the complaint, Dupont set up at least a dozen websites and three PACs to collect the money in the Democrats' names. One of the websites was reportedly set to help reunite immigrant families.

"Thousands of donors believed their hard-earned money was being used to support the causes described in solicitations, but in reality, the scam PACs had no operations beyond the fundraising itself, and no funds were used to support candidates," U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said in a statement obtained by NBC News.

Some of the websites included Beto4Senate.org, Sanders2016Campaign.org, GillumForFloridaGovernor.org, and ImmigrantChildrenUnited.org.

Prosecutors do not have any reason to believe that any of the campaigns or candidates had knowledge of Dupont's operation.

What else?

Dupont reportedly maintained such operations since 2015, according to the complaint. Dupont also reportedly failed to report the donations to the Federal Election Commission.

The accused has an extensive record of white collar convictions stemming back to 1985. Prosecutors convicted Dupont for mail fraud, bank fraud, money laundering, and more. He served time for all crimes.

If convicted on new charges, Dupont could spend up to 22 years in prison.

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