Former congressional candidate Abhijit “Beej” Das was sentenced to a 21-month prison term and fined $25,000 for violating the Federal Election Campaign Act and making false statements.
The North Andover Democrat who ran in the 2018 primary for Massachusetts’ 3rd Congressional District was convicted by a federal jury last October in Boston. As WHAV reported, the FBI alleged “Das solicited his friends and family for at least $125,000 in illegal campaign contributions, used that money for his own business expenses, debts and a 100-foot super yacht, and then lied about it.”
Das was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Richard G. Stearns. The prison sentence will be followed by one year of supervised release.
“Campaign finance laws exist to protect the rights of voters to transparency and accountability. Due to his greed and lies, Das violated those rights,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Joshua S. Levy. “When political candidates violate the law, it erodes the public’s trust in the process. It is imperative that we continue to uphold the integrity of the electoral process by holding candidates accountable.”
Boston FBI’s Jodi Cohen said “Das attempted to corrupt a free and fair election by ignoring campaign finance limits, reporting requirements and using the contributions he illegally solicited to pay off the debts of his failing hotel businesses. The FBI is determined to protect the integrity of our electoral system and will not let corruption like this go unchecked.”
To inflate his fundraising numbers, court records show, Das solicited personal loans from friends and close associates in excess of the $2,700 legal limit. Around Dec. 17, 2017, he emailed a contributor asking for a friend to support his campaign to reach a specific fundraising goal of over $450,000 by the end of the year and indicated that reaching that goal might need “some engineering.” Das advised a member of his campaign that he would “aggregate” the loans into “one batch” and execute a main transfer into the campaign account.
Further, Das had three different people contribute approximately $125,000 to his campaign and structured the contributions as personal loans to a family member to circumvent Federal Election Commission reporting requirement and contribution limits. Prosecutors said Das falsely claimed the money from the excessive contributions was his own and engaged in illegal conduit contributions to his campaign.
In addition, between January and May 2018, Das withdrew approximately $314,500 in funds from his campaign account and used at least $267,000 of these funds to pay outstanding debts for his hotel business relating to vendors, the hotel’s yacht and real estate taxes unrelated to his congressional campaign. In making these withdrawals, officials said, Das sought to conceal his conversion of campaign funds by instructing bank tellers to report the withdrawals as separate withdrawal and deposit transactions, rather than direct transfers.
Das attempted to cover up the transfers by overstating the amount of cash-on-hand the Das-for-Congress Campaign had in its bank account. For example, in June 2018, Das reported that his campaign’s total amount of cash-on-hand was approximately $440,000, when the amount was less than $5,000.