The District of Columbia’s attorney general on Monday sued an activist known for his calls to abolish the police, saying that he diverted $75,000 from a charity to pay for mansion rentals, a trip to Cancún and designer clothes.
Attorney General Brian L. Schwalb, an elected Democrat who oversees nonprofits in the city, said Brandon Anderson had turned an anti-police-brutality charity called Raheem AI into a piggy bank for himself.
Mr. Schwalb also sued Raheem AI. He asked a judge to shutter the organization, bar Mr. Anderson from leading any other Washington nonprofit and order Mr. Anderson or Raheem AI to repay the $75,000. The money would then be given to a charity chosen by the judge.
“Brandon Anderson misused charitable donations to fund lavish vacations and shopping sprees, and the Raheem AI board of directors let him get away with it,” Mr. Schwalb said in a written statement. He continued, “My office will not allow people to masquerade behind noble causes while violating the law.”
Mr. Schwalb has jurisdiction in the case because Raheem AI was incorporated in Washington. A spokesman for him declined to say what prompted the investigation. A former staff member at the nonprofit named Jasmine Banks told The New York Times this year that she had reached out to Mr. Schwalb’s office, seeking help after the nonprofit stopped paying her salary.
Mr. Anderson did not respond to a request for comment sent on Monday morning. He has previously told The Times that he takes responsibility for the group’s failures: “The bottom line is simply that it didn’t work, and as the leader of that effort I share most of the blame.”
The Times traced Raheem AI’s downfall in an article in August. After Ms. Banks looked at credit-card records and discovered Mr. Anderson’s spending patterns, she set in motion the swift unraveling of the nonprofit — as well as of Mr. Anderson’s place at the edge of anti-police activism, and of the story he told about his past.
Mr. Anderson founded his charity in 2017, telling donors and journalists that it was born out of deep personal tragedy: His fiancé, Raheem, had been unjustly killed by the police in Oklahoma in 2007.
Mr. Anderson promised that his group would deliver world-changing technological breakthroughs that would make the police more accountable — and also less necessary.
First, it sought to build a program that would allow people to file police complaints from their phones, as easy as using Yelp. Later, the organization took to building an alternative to 911 that would dispatch aid workers, not law enforcement, for nonviolent calls like drug overdoses, loitering or mental-health emergencies.
Raheem AI raised more than $4.3 million from liberal-leaning groups, particularly after the murder of George Floyd in 2020.
But the group’s high-tech projects fizzled.
Then, this spring, Ms. Anderson found that he had been spending tens of thousands in donated money on himself.
When Ms. Banks raised her concerns, the group’s board consisted of Mr. Anderson and two independent members. They put Mr. Anderson on leave. One of the two other board members, Samuel Sinyangwe, told The Times that Mr. Anderson had provided explanations for some of the expenses, saying for instance that the mansion rentals were for work-related travel.
But then Mr. Singyangwe and the other board member resigned, leaving Mr. Anderson as the group’s sole remaining director. Raheem AI still appears to exist, as a recognized nonprofit, but it appears inactive.
As the group foundered, former employees discovered something else that was troubling: They could not find proof that Raheem ever existed. Mr. Anderson did not previously respond to questions about the man whose purported life and death inspired the nonprofit.
Then Ms. Banks reached out to the D.C. attorney general seeking unpaid back pay. She said she heard back from Mr. Schwalb’s office, and investigators asked about Mr. Anderson’s use of nonprofit funds.
In the lawsuit, Mr. Schwalb also asked a judge to order Mr. Anderson or the nonprofit to pay Ms. Banks’s unpaid wages.
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