OAN Staff James Meyers
9:44 AM – Tuesday, November 26, 2024
An anti-police activist has been accused of misusing more than $75,000 in donations to pay for lavish vacations and shopping sprees and short changed his employees out of “tens of thousands of dollars in earned wages,” the attorney general for Washington, D.C., alleged on Monday.
The Office of the Attorney General for the District of Columbia is now suing Brandon Anderson, the executive director of Raheem AI, alleging that, since 2021, he “diverted $75,000 of nonprofit funds for his own personal use.”
The funds reportedly included “spending over $40,000 on a luxury vacation rental service that allows members to stay in high-end mansions and penthouse apartments, $10,000 on hotels and Airbnb’s for personal travel – including to a Cancun resort, $10,000 on designer clothing brands, and $5,000 on emergency veterinary services.”
“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,” Attorney General Brian 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 [sole District-based] employee the wages they had earned.
“My office will not allow people to masquerade behind noble causes while violating the law, cheating taxpayers, or stealing from their workers,” he added.
Anderson, who is known as an advocate for police abolition, founded Raheem Al 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 Al looked to create an emergency dispatch app that would allow people skeptical 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.
Schwalb alleges that since 2021, Anderson has raided Raheem AI’s coffers for personal use.
Additionally, the complaint against Anderson and Raheem Al details more than $40,000 in spending on mansion and penthouse apartment rentals, $10,000 on personal travel, including a trip to a Cancun resort, and a $10,000 “executive Director clothing allowance” used on purchases from luxury retailers.
The lawsuit also alleges that Anderson and Raheem AI violated the District’s Nonprofit Corporation Act, Wage Payment and Collection Law and Ban on Non Compete Agreements Act.
“The Board of Directors also failed to implement any measures to oversee the organization’s finances, including Anderson’s corruption,” according to Schwalb.
The lawsuit notes that Banks was also allegedly forced to sign an “illegal” non compete clause as part of the terms of her employment.
“It hurts my heart to say it, but I think it was a con from the beginning,” Banks told the New York Times in August about Raheem AI and Anderson.
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