DNC falls for scam, hands over $29,000 to fraudster pretending to be chair Ken Martin
A DNC official was only able to recover $7,000 of the $29,000 payment.
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A DNC official was only able to recover $7,000 of the $29,000 payment.
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) lost nearly $29,000 to an email scammer who was posing as Ken Martin, the DNC's chairman. The thief was able to scam the cash-strapped DNC out of the funds last year, according to reporting first done by NOTUS.
An unknown party was able to send the fraudulent email to a staffer at the DNC in February 2025, an official told the outlet. The email claimed to be Martin, and the staffer, who no longer works for the DNC, sent the $29,000.
The DNC official was able to catch the error minutes later, but was only able to recover $7,000 of the $29,000 payment. The fraudster was able to pull off the heist as the DNC is facing a crunch for cash and has now put its own building in Washington, DC up as collateral to get a $15 million line of credit.
The DNC admitted to what it referred to as a “misdisbursement of Committee funds” in a letter from August 2025 to the FEC, saying that the incident was caused by “the result of fraudulent activity by an external third party.”
The DNC told the agency that it would take “further steps to avoid similar events in the future.”
A spokesperson from the DNC told reporters, “The DNC takes seriously our duty to protect the funds provided to us by millions of patriotic Americans chipping in to fund our mission.”
“This was a one-off mistake that was promptly caught and addressed, and no similar issues have occurred since.”
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