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Scam PACs are back in action [1]

['Daily Kos Staff']

Date: 2025-09-19

I wrote about scam PACs recently, and—unsurprisingly—they seem to be ramping up their efforts.

This text just landed on my phone, from “Dems2025,” a scam PAC whose website offers a whole lot of nothing:

Click through, and you get a page featuring President Donald Trump’s face and a “survey” screaming: “STAND AGAINST DONALD TRUMP’S AUTHORITARIAN ATTACKS ON FREE SPEECH! Do you stand with Jimmy Kimmel against Trump’s war on free speech?”

After a few fake questions, it insists that it’s “moving fast” to engage in two special elections to replace Marco Rubio in Florida and JD Vance in Ohio. Except those elections aren’t until November 2026. But urgency is the con’s favorite trick.

And the fundraising pitch? Straight from the scam PAC playbook:

Dems 2025 is moving fast. We're preparing support for the front lines. But we’re still short of our mid-month goal, and this moment won’t wait. Right here, Right now, you can make an impact toward taking back the Senate Majority. Will you chip in $25 or more to help us reach 589 donations before midnight to ensure we can win critical open seats like these?

What “front lines”? What “preparing support”? How are they “moving fast”? Who knows, who cares—they certainly don’t.

The donation links go to ActBlue, which is supposedly cracking down on scam PACs, yet here’s another one slipping through.

The homepage declares, “We don’t take years off—because democracy doesn’t either.”

Cute, except they literally didn’t exist until May 29, 2025, per FEC filings.

And the “Contact” page isn’t even functional, featuring stock template language:

Let people know what to reach out about and what to expect after contacting you. Don’t forget to choose a storage option for submissions [email protected] (555) 555-5555

Feeling confident that these guys are on the up-and-up and ready for people who try to contact them?

The treasurer is Chris Koob, a principal at MBA Consulting Group, which handles compliance paperwork for political candidates and PACs. So basically Koob files forms and slaps his name on them—nothing more. But who’s actually behind Dems2025 is still unknown—I searched the address in the FEC’s database, and it’s a UPS store. It’s literally just a rented mailbox.

Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia is among MBA Consulting Group’s long list of high-profile clients.

So far it’s raised just over $19,000, and the only reported expense is ActBlue itself. Next filing, expect to see a text vendor added to the list—those spam blasts don’t send themselves.

The danger here isn’t just people losing a few bucks; it’s that scam PACs poison the well. They burn through donor lists—how the hell did they get my number?—and confuse people into thinking that they’re giving to Democrats, making it harder for legitimate campaigns and organizations like Daily Kos to raise money for real work.

One note, because it’s a persistent myth: ActBlue doesn’t sell your data. The way your information ends up in these spam mills is when losing campaigns unload their email lists to pay off their debts. Brokers then hawk those lists to anyone. That’s why that one donation you made years ago to some long-shot candidate can turn into an endless stream of grift in your inbox.

But that’s not ActBlue’s fault. Letting scam PACs like Dems2025 use their platform? That’s on them and the rest of the political establishment that tolerates it. Would MBA Consulting Group continue working with these scammers if they risked losing clients like Sens. Adam Schiff, Amy Klobuchar, Jon Ossoff, and Raphael Warnock?

This has to end, and you can do your part by making sure that your network of activists and donors knows to look out for these scams—and refuses to fall prey to them.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/9/19/2344290/-Scam-PACs-are-back-in-action?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=top_news_slot_4&pm_medium=web

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