Kansas senator’s campaign bilked out of $345,000
WASHINGTON — Two weeks after Sen. Jerry Moran won his third term representing Kansas in the U.S. Senate, his campaign treasurer Timothy Gottschalk called the Republic County Sheriff’s Office and asked an officer to come to his office.
In the final six weeks leading up to the election, Moran’s campaign spent more than $2 million to have his face featured on television screens across the state. To get its ads on TV, the campaign used a Virginia-based company called SRCP Media. The media buyer reserved time slots for the ads in Kansas media markets and invoiced the campaign. The campaign then sent the money to SRCP Media, sometimes as much as $788,959 at a time.
So much money was moving from the campaign that it didn’t notice on Oct. 25, when an invoice for $345,000 for payment to SRCP Media came from an email address the company hadn’t been using. The campaign didn’t notice when it happened a second time, either, for the same amount, a day after the election.
It wasn’t until Moran’s team got a notification from Astra Bank, a small bank with seven branches in Kansas and one in Nebraska, that the campaign looked into its invoices. Someone had created an invoice that looked like one from SRCP Media, but had changed the account and routing numbers. The email it came from did not match the email used by SRCP Media.
More than two months later, it remains unclear who stole the money from the campaign. The Republic County Sheriff’s office handed it off to the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, which handed it off to the FBI, according to a police report obtained through the Kansas Open Records Act.
While the FBI’S Kansas City office would not say whether it was investigating the case, both the Moran campaign and SRCP Media say they are cooperating with investigators.
Both SRCP Media and the Moran campaign declined to comment on the record.
Even without a culprit, the theft exposes a constellation of vulnerabilities in modern day political campaigns, where millions often move through small, shoe-string operations with little
we worked with almost every resource partner that we knew,” Van Orden said. “And from what I’ve seen and heard, I only know of organizations from Southern Nevada that applied (this time), but we’re trying to get the word out everywhere.”
One of those applicants this time around is the Southern Nevada Veterans Chamber of Commerce, led by its president, Lester Lumbad, a former airman. Along with advocacy for veterans’ issues, Lumbad said the chamber’s mission is to spur entrepreneurship, employment and education within the Las Vegas military community. He noted many of the chamber’s member organizations could stand to benefit from an outreach centers in some form.
“We’re pretty well-equipped, based on the relationships that we’ve focused on building around the community,” Lumbad said. “We’ve tried to be creative, offering different programs not only to connect to people, but then also plug them into the right resources they need. So having a (outreach center) accessible to us would just make all those things a lot easier.
“So that collaboration piece is already there, or at least the possibility for it happening is already there,” Lumbad continued.
If approved, Nevada could receive an award up to $325,000, according to the SBA, with whatever organization running the program being required to run an additional program called Boots to Business, a boot camp that teaches basic business principles for soon-to-be discharged service members, at either Nellis Air Force Base or the Naval Air Station in Fallon.
The outreach centers program also offers services like one-to-one mentoring, helping prospective business operators develop a five-year business plan, and reviewing monthly financial statements to help determine a company’s feasibility, according to its website.
And all of these services can prime existing small businesses for their next stage of growth, said Monifa Caines, the CEO and owner of a beauty supply company tailored for women of color called Queen of Spades. After being discharged following a three-year stint at Nellis in 2006, Caines remembers going from job to job in the corporate world. She said she never felt like she fit in.
When Caines left the Air Force, transition programs like Boots to Business didn’t yet exist. And though she felt prepared to run her business by the time Queen of Spades was started in 2019, navigating the COVID-19 pandemic was among the hardest challenges Caines said she had faced.
“They say be your authentic self, but some companies don’t like that,” Caines said. “During the pandemic, I had to do everything I could to survive. I was just working my business; I didn’t have any part-time or nine-tofive job to fall back on.”
For Caines, having an outreach center will be important for growing her presence here in Nevada. She initially started Queen of Spades in Maryland but moved here in October to begin operations near the West Coast.
“I love that it’s a veteran focused organization that understands us, speaks the language and can translate certain things about approaching people, it’s not about the rank,” Caines said. “And since I’m new to business and I’d like to be a serial entrepreneur, there are questions I have about growing that not everyone can answer.”
And while other business advocacy groups run similar programs, the veteran-to-veteran connection will allow program administrators to help in ways normal civilians simply can’t, said Eric Ranks, executive director of the Veterans Connection and CEO and co-owner of 22 Salute Spirits & Coffee.
“Veteran-to-veteran connections are more important than nonservice member-to-veteran because veterans feel like the traditional person doesn’t understand some of the things they’re dealing with,” Ranks said. “And starting a business is really hard. Most businesses fail in the first one to three years, and if you have a support group around you, that can make the difference between being successful or not.”
Ranks said he and his partners launched 22 Salute in 2021. It sells one-liter bottles of vodka and mesquite-roasted coffee sourced from Honduras and Guatemala. A portion of the profits from 22 Salute go back to the Veterans Connection, a nonprofit Ranks started to provide resources to veterans struggling with mental health issues, including post-traumatic stress disorder.
Ranks added that 22 Salute had been fortunate enough to have a strong foundation and had even partnered with Smith’s Food & Drug to sell its vodka there, with plans to launch a bourbon in the works.
Should the VBOC program come to fruition here, Ranks and Caines both said they would consider enrolling. But until then, they and others will be waiting with hopes that good news is on the way.
“Nevada’s veteran community is full of heroes who have made incredible sacrifices for our country,” Rosen said. “As these men and women transition back into civilian life, we owe it to them to provide the support they need to succeed.”