One of Mayor Lenny Curry’s political action committees squandered about $120,000 last year by falling victim to an elaborate phone scam that police detectives traced back to Nigeria, according to reports from a Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office investigation that included help from the Secret Service.
In May of 2017, Eric Robinson — a Sarasota County School Board member and an accountant well known for representing Florida Republican PACs, including Curry’s — wired $119,797 from one of Curry’s main political committees, Build Something that Lasts, to five different addresses ranging from Wyoming to Ohio and Missouri. Robinson believed he was doing so at the request of a fundraiser who works for Curry. The payments were purportedly for catering and consulting services, paid to people with no known connection to Curry or anyone who runs his political operation.
It turns out, investigators found, a phone scammer duped Robinson into believing he was Curry’s fundraiser, Kevin Hofmann of Tallahassee. Robinson didn’t realize the ruse until the real Hofmann phoned into Robinson while he was on the phone with the impersonator.
Investigators have not developed any suspects in the case.
Robinson made the criminal complaint May 2017, but the details of this investigation have never become public.
Build Something that Lasts expense reports still show the five different payments for catering and consulting services. The Times-Union was alerted about the existence of the investigation by Jon Susce, an independent journalist in Sarasota. The Sarasota Sheriff’s Office provided the incident reports.
Detectives apparently had a hard time tracking what ultimately happened to the money. One address where Robinson sent thousands of dollars traced back to a Wyoming resident. That resident told investigators a man named Mark, who he met and developed a relationship with on the internet, told him to expect wire transfers of $19,115 and $19,872 and to mail the money to an address in Converse, Texas.
“As soon as we were made aware of the fraud committed against the accounting firm that handles the (political committee) we notified authorities who launched an investigation that revealed a complex scheme to defraud the PC, including hacking the email of the fundraiser for the committee,” Tim Baker, Curry’s political consultant, said in a written statement.
Baker said police were able to recover some money, and that Robinson’s accounting firm paid Build Something that Lasts back the balance of the lost money.
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