Founder of anti-cop group accused of using donations to fund lavish lifestyle

Brandon D. Anderson, 39, who founded an app intended to replace law enforcement officers with average citizens called Raheem AI, is alleged to have spent at least $250,000 on lavish goods in 2021 which were not approved by the organization, the New York Times reported.

After employees had gone unpaid, they were left with a dilemma: notify law enforcement about the founder of their company - which has a goal of abolishing the police - or handle it internally. They ultimately decided to contact the District of Columbia's attorney general after realizing their wages were not going to be recovered due to Anderson allegedly funneling the money to himself. The DC attorney general is now considering launching a criminal probe into the founder's fraud allegations.

Brandon Anderson. Photo credit: Facebook

Anderson committed "the perfect crime," claimed Nancy Mariano, a former software engineer at the nonprofit, who explained that she was skeptical about the company notifying police because Anderson "is a black person" and "the way that police treat masculine-presenting black people is terrible."

"Even if Brandon committed a crime, I don't want Brandon to die, so I don't want to put Brandon in that position," said Mariano. However, not all employees felt the same.

Jasmine Banks, 38, the company's deputy director who uncovered Anderson's lavish spending habits, was the one to notify law enforcement, telling the New York Times that she has "no" guilt for contacting the police.

Banks, who has worked for multiple liberal nonprofits, discovered that Anderson spent $80,000 on vacations around the world. He stayed at mansions, including a luxurious resort in Cancun, Mexico. The founder posted about his audacious spending on Facebook and uploaded a photo of himself by a pool along with the caption, "Cancun."

Brandon Anderson. Photo credit: Facebook

Brandon Anderson. Photo credit: Facebook

Anderson spent upwards of $11,000 of charity money on designer clothing in 2021, according to business records viewed by the outlet, which show a $2,000 transaction at Bloomingdales and a $2,800 transaction at Bottega Veneta, a luxury Italian store. Other purchases he made were from designer stores that included Alexander McQueen, Farfetch, and Saks.

Anderson marked each clothing purchase as an "executive director clothing allowance." Banks said that board members never approved this.

She explained that she was first alerted to Anderson's spending habits after noticing a $1,536 credit card bill. Banks investigated the purchase and that's when she discovered additional unapproved expenses. Banks contacted the nonprofit's board members and said there were "confidential issues" that required "immediate attention."

Board members told the NYT that "not in a million years" would they have approved these expenses from Anderson, especially the clothing allowance since employees work from home. Anderson also spent $46,000 on Uber and Lyft, per the company records reviewed by the paper.

Employees reported that Anderson was becoming increasingly absent from work as his spending increased. They said the Raheem AI app they were developing was failing, and when employees asked the founder for guidance, he deflected responsibility and said that's "why he hired smart people."

The board members have since placed Anderson on administrative leave and donors pulled funding, which resulted in the nonprofit going defunct.

Raheem AI was launched in 2017 with the mission to abolish police and create an alternative network of "liberated dispatchers" that consisted of social workers, medics, and psychologists responding to 911 calls instead of local police and department dispatchers. Anderson, a gay US Army veteran, founded the anti-police organization after his late fiancee, Raheem, was reportedly killed by an abusive cop. The endeavor raised at least $4.4 million in donations.

Anderson denied the accusations made against him, telling the NYT in a statement that some of the allegations were "rife with untruths."