BOMBSHELL: Assistant Police Chief Says He Uncovered BILLIONS of Dollars in ActBlue Mortgage Fraud

Last month, Law Enforcement Today published Part 1 of an investigative report on ActBlue, the fundraising arm of the Democratic National Committee, regarding the alleged use of donor money to commit real estate fraud and facilitate money laundering.

A former assistant police chief in Tennessee, Shawn Taylor, senior research analyst for the Election Fairness Institute (EFI), has been working with Arizona State Senator Mark Finchem, executive director of the EFI, in probing ActBlue.  

Law Enforcement Today conducted a lengthy telephone interview with Taylor, and to say it was eye-opening is a vast understatement.

He alleged that what amounts to hundreds of billions of dollars in “mortgage money” fraud was committed for the benefit of ActBlue, which then funnels the money through NGOs and into the Democrat Party coffers.

Some made its way into organizations that actively oppose the Republican Party, and President Trump in particular. When we asked Taylor how much money was involved, he said, “We’re talking trillions by the time you get done looking at it.”

Law Enforcement Today is not making accusations about the individuals involved with these transactions, only that they appear to be highly unusual. 

Taylor isn’t just blather. He has all the receipts, having spent thousands of hours combing through Lexis-Nexis reports.

He then went through a series of examples, chapter and verse, where homes of connected individuals sometimes “sold” for hundreds of times what they were worth.

Or, some received multiple mortgages for properties that were far above they’re worth. 

One example is Regina Wallace Jones, the CEO of ActBlue. A property owned by her located at 1257 Runnymede Street, East Palo Alto, CA.

That home is a relatively modest (by California standards) single-family home that has a footprint of just over 2,600 square feet. A recent listing for the house on Zillow had an asking price of $1,727,200.

The home allegedly serves as an operational base for ActBlue. 

Taylor obtained a Lexis-Nexis report of the home and was stunned to find the following alleged history:

On May 21, 2002, Wallace-Jones, along with someone named Stefford Jones, possibly her husband, bought the house for $689,500.

On the same day, Regina Wallace-Jones and Stefford Jones received a $651,500 loan mortgage from Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, Inc. Additionally, Regina Wallace-Jones received two additional mortgage loans, totaling $651,600 and $552,253, both from Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, Inc.

On the same date, the sale price was listed at $68,950,000, with two unlisted sources providing cash loans of $10,035,000 and $55,125,000. 

Finally, on December 6, 2002, Regina Wallace-Jones and Stefford Jones received two additional mortgage loans: one for $551,520 from Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, Inc., and another for $100,350 from Wells Fargo Bank. 

Altogether, for a house with an assessed value of $979,030.00, Regina Wallace-Jones and Stefford Jones obtained seven mortgage loans totaling $67,667,323, or nearly 70 times the property's value. 

It gets worse. 

In December 2004, Stefford-Jones and Regina Wallace-Jones obtained a $160,000 mortgage loan from Wells Fargo Bank, and on January 13, 2004, they received a $250,000 mortgage loan from JPMorgan Chase Bank.

On July 15, 2015, Stefford Jones sold the Runnymede home to himself and his wife, using three mortgage loans from Wells Fargo Bank totaling $565,000, $74,800, and $565,000. 

Taylor told LET that the five simultaneous filings on the same date, May 21, 2002 should have been a red flag for someone at the bank.

Three of those bore identical sale prices of $689,500, however, they had different loan amounts or borrowers.

There were two other sale prices and loan amounts that likewise should have raised a red flag. 

Taylor likewise told us that the multiple mortgage requests appeared to show an intent to cycle fraudulent proceeds.

He said that the fact that the Lexis-Nexis report on the Runnymede home showed 13-14 deed transfers recorded in 272 months indicates possible money laundering. 

Taylor obtained receipts from all the transactions he investigated.

The address at 1257 Runnymede actually had the property description changed on October 22, 2024.

Instead of showing the home as a five-bedroom, three-bath single-family home built in 2001, it was now showing a one-story home with two baths built in 2016. The initial description from 2001 showed a two-story home.

Taylor believes that the house description was changed to call his character into question, but he has all the receipts and can prove the description was changed. 

Fast forward to 2024. Regina Wallace-Jones, no longer the CEO of ActBlue, (allegedly) owned another home at 1208 Cameron Lane, Daly City, California, for $600,000, along with her husband, Stefford, and purchased it for $600,000 on 7/19/2005. 

After that, a sale was recorded for $60 million, accompanied by a $6 million hard cash loan.

On the same date, another $60 million was received with a $48 million hard cash loan. The home was described as a two-story home with two bedrooms and two baths, built in 1985. 

Suddenly, on November 11, 2024, roughly a week after the presidential election, the activity for that address disappeared, and it was now described as a one-story, three-bedroom, two-bath home built in 1956 with a much smaller lot. 

The following ActBlue official, with what appears to be questionable mortgage activity, is Nocole Paulding, Director of Operations and Controller.

Paulding operates out of 27 Old Maid’s Lane, Glastonbury, CT. According to LexisNexis, the house is worth $502,500. Yet somehow, she was able to secure a $50 million “sale” with an additional $40 million loan. 

The investigation into ActBlue and “magic mortgages” began in Tennessee, and LET will follow up with how that came about in a future piece.

It’s fascinating how it all ties together, as our readers may wonder how a former police chief in Tennessee was able to dig into the behind-the-scenes hijinks involving ActBlue officials. 

Through his research, Taylor was able to find (and prove) that ActBlue is acting as a funding arm for many non-profits, many of them anti-Trump, through a sophisticated money-laundering operation using primarily “magic mortgages.”

As he told us, “This is the money that is funding the swamp and everyone involved,” including USAID, The Lincoln Project, and many more. 

Among NGOs, PACS, and others benefiting from ActBlue’s financial shenanigans are labor unions, teachers’ unions, realtor associations, Planned Parenthood, The Sierra Club, gay rights organizations, and Black Lives Matter, to name but a few.

ActBlue also funds the Democratic National Committee and benefits Democrats such as Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Jamie Raskin (D-MD), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and a bevy of far-left progressives.  

Taylor laid out a series of loans and “hard cash” (origin unknown) loans. He explained that what people do is take out the “magic mortgages” and then launder that money to nonprofits and ActBlue. 

For example, the property at 1257 Runnymede Street was continually transferred back and forth between the owners.

It was listed as being worth $689,500; however, on the same date, it sold for $68.9 million with a $55 million mortgage and a $125,000 hard cash loan.

On the same date, it sells again for $68.9 million with a $10.03 million hard cash loan. In other words, it was sold twice on the same day, with different loan amounts. 

Sean Taylor isn’t the only one who is on to the “magic mortgage” scheme. The House Judiciary Committee released a report in April outlining how ActBlue loosened its fraud prevention rules twice in 2024. Based on what Taylor was able to uncover, it’s hard to imagine they could have gotten much more lenient. 

According to internal documents, “ActBlue executives and staff are aware that both foreign and domestic fraudulent actors are exploiting the platform, but do not take the threat seriously.”

Fraud prevention employees were instructed to “look for reasons to accept contributions” rather than flagging suspicious ones. 

As a result of the above, Chairmen Jim Jordan (R-OH), Bryan Steil (R-WI), and James Comer (R-KY) of the Judiciary Committee, Committee on House Administration, and Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, respectively, sent a letter to ActBlue requesting additional documentation and transcribed interviews with two ActBlue staff members. 

ActBlue has other issues besides the “magic mortgages” one. According to Connecticut Inside Investigator, FEC records examined showed a series of small money donations allegedly made to ActBlue.

A couple that stood out involves Barbara Schmerzler, a retired real estate broker in her 80s, and Clifford Slayman, a retired Yale professor, also in his 80s. 

FEC records show that together, they have allegedly donated $250,000 to ActBlue since its inception.

Records identified over $110,000 in total, giving the two have reportedly given to various campaigns and PACs. The majority of those donations were routed through ActBlue. 

In 2023, FEC data showed 2,549 donations had been made in Schmerzler’s name.

She disputed the frequency of donations and the amount of money, writing in an affidavit that those amounts did not reflect her donations.

Similarly, Slayman signed an affidavit in April 2023 with FEC records showing 7,539 donations totaling $213,163 that had been made in his name.

Again, Slayman said that the frequency of donations and the amount of money donated did not match his donations. 

Dominic Rapini, a cybersecurity professional, identified a total of at least 18 individual donors as being straw donors and said the frequency of donations ramped up, particularly during the 2022 election cycle. 

For example, records showed that between 2015 and 2019, Schmerzelr’s recorded donations ranged from 6 to 66 per year. In 2021, that number exploded to 1,523, an average of over four donations per day.

Since data shows that roughly one percent of the population donates more than $200 to campaigns and PACS in a given year, the frequency of Schmerzler’s “donations” raised a red flag.

FEC records showed her donations more than doubled between 2020 and 2021. In 2020, she was recorded as donating $3,230.60 through ActBlue, while the following year that number increased over double to $7,352.09. And she is only one example. 

The majority of her donations are small so as not to draw attention, averaging no more than $20.

In 2021, she was recorded as donating over $7,000, with an average donation of $4.83; most of her donations totaled $5. On several dates, Schmerzler was recorded as donating 30 times per day, which is absurd. 

Moreover, Schmerzler has no significant record of donating to political candidates in Connecticut. The only recorded donation in the SEEC database was a $700 donation to a PAC for realtors she made in 2008. 

Her employment records in FEC filings are also suspect, where she is listed as a “realtor” and her employer is listed as “self” without further details.

For the donations made in her name in 2024, her occupation and employer are both listed as “not employed,” rather than “retired.”

According to records, unemployed and retired individuals accounted for the majority of donations made by Connecticut residents to ActBlue in 2024. Rapini said that is another red flag.

Out of the 18 likely straw donors from Connecticut that he identified, 10 had their occupation listed as 'retired' in FEC data, while three had their occupation listed as 'not employed'. 

Slayman’s data was similar to Schmerzler’s. 

Rapini identified yet another red flag. In FEC records for Schmerzler, Slayman, and others with suspicious donation records, donations were made to an oddly high number of committees, averaging 90. 

In the case of Slayman, he supposedly donated money to ActBlue earmarked for 523 different campaigns and PACs. Scherzler’s donations were earmarked for 101 different campaigns and PACs, Inside Investigator reported. 

It was noted that FEC data from 2024, identifying ActBlue donations by Connecticut residents, followed a similar pattern, with multiple individuals making thousands of dollars per month in small-dollar donations, with the majority of donors listing their occupation as either unemployed or retired. 

Magic mortgages. Straw donors. ActBlue might have a lot to answer for, thanks in part to people like Sean Taylor and Dominic Rapini. 

In the next installment of our series, we’ll examine how Taylor’s quest to uncover the truth began in Tennessee and involved the Dixie Mafia, narcotics, election fraud, and corruption involving state and federal officials.