Ex-New York Assembly Candidate Charged With Campaign Finance Fraud

New York Times

16 hours ago

A former New York State Assembly candidate used fake donations and forged signatures to fraudulently inflate the share of public matching funds he received in last year's election, federal prosecutors said on Friday.
The former candidate, Dao Yin, was charged with wire fraud in a federal criminal complaint. He was scheduled to make his initial appearance before a magistrate judge in Federal District Court in Brooklyn on Friday afternoon.
The charging of Mr. Yin, a Democrat who ran for a State Assembly seat in Queens, came a year after The New York Times published an investigation that found he appeared to have listed dozens of fake donors to increase his allotment of money under a new state matching-funds program meant to increase the power of donors making small political contributions.
Prosecutors said Mr. Yin, 62, had abused the system by using a scheme that The Times found yielded him $162,000 in matching funds. It was one of the largest sums received by an Assembly candidate last year, despite Mr. Yin's relatively unheralded status.
He ultimately received just 6 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary, in which he challenged Ronald Kim, an incumbent assemblyman. Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn opened a criminal investigation focused on Mr. Yin in November.
A lawyer for Mr. Yin could not immediately be reached for comment.
Mr. Yin's campaign filings contained glaring red flags, The Times found. Half of the money he raised directly from individuals came in cash, the least traceable form of donation. It was a much higher proportion than the 5.2 percent average for all other Assembly candidates who participated in the matching program.
Only nine of 300 contribution cards he turned in contained the required contact information for the donors, including phone numbers and email addresses. Even so, the state Public Campaign Finance Board granted him matching public funds, records show.
Candidates must disclose certain information about their donors. But in Mr. Yin's case, the board permitted waivers via 'good-faith letters' that supposedly documented his efforts to obtain the missing information from donors.
After The Times published its investigation into Mr. Yin, the Public Campaign Finance Board unanimously adopted an emergency resolution meant to tighten its rules and prevent future abuses.
More than two dozen donors listed as contributors to Mr. Yin's campaign told The Times they had given money to it. Many expressed outrage that their names had been used.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
William K. Rashbaum contributed reporting.