Nice work if you can get it dep’t:

In the 17 years since Barbara Hafer served in elected office, she’s all but disappeared from Pennsylvania politics.

A Republican elected four times to statewide office, she was never again on a ballot after switching parties and leaving the state treasurer’s office in 2005. Her 2017 guilty plea on charges that she lied to federal agents during a public corruption case has even barred her from holding public office in the state again.

But for nearly two decades, Hafer’s political action committee has not only remained open, it’s been thriving.

And what it’s being used for is a troubling practice benefitting Hafer’s daughter, according to a Caucus review of the committee’s reports and interviews with campaign finance experts and reform activists.

Since she left office, Hafer’s committee has collected $2.3 million — not from donors, but from investments that she made with her donors’ money.

Investing campaign cash is rare but legal in Pennsylvania and federally. What’s concerning, experts say, is that the committee has paid Bethany Hafer, who serves as the committee’s treasurer, a monthly consulting fee for the last decade that’s amounted to more than $500,000. Other expenses totalling more than $35,000 were listed as car and cell phone payments.

Pennsylvania’s election law requires that all campaign expenses be made “for the purpose of influencing the outcome of an election.”

The Friends of Barbara Hafer committee’s expenses, however, were made as neither Barbara nor Bethany Hafer were publicly considering running for any office, as Barbara Hafer was in the midst of a criminal case and as the committee significantly slowed down its contributions to other political campaigns