CNN Investigates

How elderly dementia patients are unwittingly fueling political campaigns

A CNN investigation reveals how deceptive political fundraising has misled elderly Americans into giving away millions of dollars

By Blake Ellis, Melanie Hicken, Yahya Abou-Ghazala, Audrey Ash, Kyung Lah, Anna-Maja Rappard, Casey Tolan, Lou Robinson and Byron Manley, CNN

Published October 22, 2024

(CNN) — The 80-year-old communications engineer from Texas had saved for decades, driving around in an old car and buying clothes from thrift stores so he’d have enough money to enjoy his retirement years.

But as dementia robbed him of his reasoning abilities, he began making online political donations over and over again — eventually telling his son he believed he was part of a network of political operatives communicating with key Republican leaders. In less than two years, the man became one of the country’s largest grassroots supporters of the Republican Party, ultimately giving away nearly half a million dollars to former President Donald Trump and other candidates. Now, the savings account he spent his whole life building is practically empty.

The story of this unlikely political benefactor is one of many playing out across the country.

More than 1,000 reports filed with government agencies and consumer advocacy groups reviewed by CNN, along with an analysis of campaign finance data and interviews with dozens of contributors and their family members, show how deceptive political fundraisers have victimized hundreds of elderly Americans and misled those battling dementia or other cognitive impairments into giving away millions of dollars — far more than they ever intended. Some unintentionally joined the ranks of the top grassroots political donors in the country as they tapped into retirement savings and went into debt, contributing six-figure sums through thousands of transactions.

To provide a snapshot of who these vulnerable donors are and how much money they have lost to increasingly aggressive fundraising campaigns, reporters reached out to more than 300 of the biggest and most frequent small-dollar political donors and their family members. Through these interviews and consumer complaints, reporters collected the accounts of more than 50 unwitting elderly donors and traced the path of where their money went.

Often coming in $5 or $10 at a time, contributions from this small sampling of donors alone added up to more than $6 million over the last five years — the majority of which ended up with Trump and a long list of other Republican candidates, CNN found.

Donations an 80-year-old former engineer made to Republican political groups

Total donated through WinRed from September 2022 to June 2024

Oct 2022Nov 2022Dec 2022Jan 2023Feb 2023Mar 2023Apr 2023May 2023Jun 2023Jul 2023Aug 2023Sep 2023Oct 2023Nov 2023$100,000$200,000$300,000.

You can read the entire article by googling CNN. Do we want people that take from the elderly leading our country….. It’s all about greed!

Marvin Dixon/Founder

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