Defund the Police activist misused charitable donations on lavish vacations, shopping sprees: DC attorney general
An anti-police activist misused more than $75,000 in donations to pay for a lavish Cancun vacation and several shopping sprees and stiffed his sole employee out of “tens of thousands of dollars in earned wages,” the attorney general for Washington, DC, alleged on Monday.DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb sued Brandon Anderson and his “police transparency and accountability” nonprofit organization, Raheem AI, for allegedly violating the District’s workers’ rights and charity group laws, claiming that the “Defund the Police” backer used charitable funds “to support his luxurious lifestyle.” “Brandon Anderson misused charitable donations to fund lavish vacations and shopping sprees, and the Raheem AI Board of Directors let him get away with it,” Schwalb said in a statement. “Not only did their financial abuses violate fundamental principles of nonprofit governance, but Anderson and Raheem AI failed to pay their employee the wages they had earned,” the attorney general added.
“My office will not allow people to masquerade behind noble causes while violating the law, cheating taxpayers, or stealing from their workers.”Anderson, a self-described advocate for police abolition, founded Raheem AI in 2017 with the goal of equipping “black, brown, and indigenous community crisis responders with the tools, training, connections, and funding they need to provide care.”Raheem AI sought to create an emergency dispatch app that would allow people wary of police to bypass calling 911 during a time of crisis. Anderson’s nonprofit received more than $4.3 million in donations before its app project “fizzed,” according to the New York Times. Jasmine Banks, a former Raheem AI staffer, told the outlet in August that she discovered credit card records detailing Anderson’s lavish spending after the nonprofit stopped paying her salary. Schwalb alleges that since 2021, Anderson has raided Raheem AI’s coffers for personal use.The complaint ag...