The 80-year-old communications engineer from Texas had saved for decades, driving around in an old car and buying clothes from thrift stores so he’d have enough money to enjoy his retirement years.
But as dementia robbed him of his reasoning abilities, he began making online political donations over and over again — eventually telling his son he believed he was part of a network of political operatives communicating with key Republican leaders. In less than two years, the man became one of the country’s largest grassroots supporters of the Republican Party, ultimately giving away nearly half a million dollars to former President Donald Trump and other candidates. Now, the savings account he spent his whole life building is practically empty.
The story of this unlikely political benefactor is one of many playing out across the country.
More than 1,000 reports filed with government agencies and consumer advocacy groups reviewed by CNN, along with an analysis of campaign finance data and interviews with dozens of contributors and their family members, show how deceptive political fundraisers have victimized hundreds of elderly Americans and misled those battling dementia or other cognitive impairments into giving away millions of dollars — far more than they ever intended. Some unintentionally joined the ranks of the top grassroots political donors in the country as they tapped into retirement savings and went into debt, contributing six-figure sums through thousands of transactions.
To provide a snapshot of who these vulnerable donors are and how much money they have lost to increasingly aggressive fundraising campaigns, reporters reached out to more than 300 of the biggest and most frequent small-dollar political donors and their family members. Through these interviews and consumer complaints, reporters collected the accounts of more than 50 unwitting elderly donors and traced the path of where their money went.
Often coming in $5 or $10 at a time, contributions from this small sampling of donors alone added up to more than $6 million over the last five years — the majority of which ended up with Trump and a long list of other Republican candidates, CNN found.
While this is a small fraction of the billions raised by political campaigns, for many of the individuals who made the donations, the sums represented huge portions of their life savings.
Deceptive fundraising tactics, including those that trick elderly donors, were exposed in the wake of the 2020 election. While studies show that older Americans tend to lean more Republican, both parties have continued to rake in donations from elderly voters. And mainstream Republican candidates have only doubled down on this strategy, using more aggressive and predatory tactics than those used by Democrats, according to donor complaints, interviews with experts and a review of solicitations. The Republican fundraising machine has been subject to more than 800 complaints to the Federal Trade Commission since 2022 — nearly seven times more than the number of complaints lodged against the other side….