Sex, Drugs and Debt: Treasurers Keep Fleecing Their Political Committees

In 2023, Jonas Murphy said he’d fallen in love for the first time.

But his partner was accustomed to a lavish lifestyle. Murphy made good money as a lobbyist and political committee treasurer for the National Venture Capital Association, yet he felt pressure to provide more than he could afford.

So Murphy turned to crime.

And in the end, he lost both his partner and possibly his freedom.

On Thursday, a federal judge will decide how much time — if any — Murphy will spend in prison for embezzling more than $1 million from the trade association’s political action committee between December 2023 and June 2025. Murphy, who pleaded guilty in December, said he regrets his actions, which he described as driven by fear of losing that relationship, according to a letter he wrote last month to Judge Emmet Sullivan.

Murphy’s case is hardly a one-off embezzlement binge. Rather, it’s one in a yearslong string of cases in which trusted political treasurers, consultants and advisers embezzled millions from campaigns and committees often plagued by shoddy financial protections and controls.

During the past year alone, several other individuals have faced federal charges related to alleged embezzlement or related financial crimes involving the political campaigns and committees they serve.

In Montana, Abbey Lee Cook pleaded guilty to three counts of wire fraud after misappropriating more than $250,000 in campaign funds, which she used for payments on her personal credit card, car loan and commercial property.

In Virginia, Katherine Buchanan admitted to embezzling more than $840,000 from Democratic political committees, including the campaigns of Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine. Buchanan, who pleaded guilty in June 2025, spent the money on personal expenses, including landscaping, chartered yacht tours, a Peloton bike, concert tickets and trips to Italy.

In Pennsylvania and Florida, Yolanda Brown is accused of fleecing two Democratic campaigns — allegations her lawyer, Khambrel Davis, denied when contacted by the Philadelphia Inquirer in March. In 2024, Brown, then Yolanda Cheers, paid $330,000 after pleading guilty in a separate case to felony grand theft for stealing money from two organizations that she used to pay herself bonuses and make unauthorized credit card payments, including a $10,000 vineyard trip.

And in Maryland, James Appel is facing money laundering and wire fraud charges after federal prosecutors said he took a combined $200,000 from two clients to refinance a loan on his yacht. Appel pleaded not guilty in March and continues to serve as the trustee on Rep. Andy Ogles’ (R-Tennessee) legal defense fund.

Perhaps the most infamous modern-day political thief is Kinde Durkee, who pleaded guilty in 2012 to embezzling millions from more than 50 Democratic political committees, including about $4.5 million from the campaign of the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-California).

Federal officials said at the time that Durkee was motivated by “greed,” plain and simple. During her sentencing hearing, Durkee took “full and complete responsibility” for her actions and said she was “truly sorry for the hurt I have caused my former clients, my former employees, my friends and my family.”

But rarely are embezzlers driven by pure greed, as Murphy’s case illustrates, campaign finance fraud experts told NOTUS.

There’s the pressure of romantic entanglements. Personal financial issues and debt, substance abuse and gambling addictions, a sick family member, and the lust for luxury may also cause financial professionals to begin skimming from the sometimes massive pools of political cash they’re charged with managing.

“I convinced myself that I needed to impress them and maintain their affection through material means — through gifts, travel, and projecting a lifestyle that I could not realistically sustain,” Murphy wrote. “Over time, that thinking became increasingly irrational, and instead of confronting it or asking for help, I made a series of deeply wrong decisions.”

In supportive letters to the judge last month, Murphy’s friends and family members said they were shocked when they learned of his crime, which they described as out of character for the man many had known since he was adopted at 3 months old. (His former partner, notably, does not appear to have submitted such a letter, and his lawyer stated in the sentencing memo that the relationship had ended.)

A longtime friend of Cook also wrote a letter in December to the Montana judge, revealing Cook was “going through a challenging and painful divorce.” Cook herself told the court she was overwhelmed by her workload and “the train ran away rather quickly, as you can imagine,” according to a transcript of her plea hearing on Sept. 9.

Such letters and other records that could shed light on Buchanan’s motives are sealed “to safeguard the defendant’s private and sensitive health information,” according to the judge’s order.

Lawyers for Cook, Buchanan and Murphy declined to comment or to make their clients available for an interview.

Buchanan, who authorities released from federal custody on May 29, did not respond to letters sent to her in federal prison before her release.A judge ordered in April for Cook to be jailed for violating her presentencing release conditions. Her next hearing is scheduled for September.

In an email, Appel told NOTUS: “I have pled not guilty to all charges,” when asked if he disputes the government’s version of the events and if there were any mitigating factors or circumstances. Appel’s lawyer, Jeff Ifrah, did not respond to emailed requests for comment.

While theft is as old as money itself, federal campaign finance regulators said they noticed an increase in political embezzlement cases in the mid-2000s.

So in 2007, the Federal Election Commission released safeguards to help political committees protect themselves — and their employees — from falling victim.

Dave Mason, general counsel at Aristotle International, has been tracking embezzlement cases since serving as a Republican FEC commissioner during the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. He worked with agency auditors to develop the 2007 recommendations, which he characterized as an “extra set of eyes on the books.”

“What’s frustrating about it is that with all this experience, it’s not getting less common,” Mason told NOTUS.

Indeed, every month or two, another alleged political embezzlement scandal seems to materialize: in Baltimore elections, in Texas county campaigning, in Pennsylvania state politics. A fledgling PAC accused its former treasurer last week of misappropriating most of what it had raised in the first few weeks, then going dark — and reopening lines of communication only after NOTUS contacted him for comment.

And that’s not including other kinds of financial crimes — from cybertheft to old-school check washing via U.S. mail — that campaign committees for U.S. senators, U.S. House members, national party committees and political action committees have endured.

If you’re Sens. John Thune (R-South Dakota), Chuck Schumer (D-New York), Cory Booker (D-New Jersey), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) or Jerry Moran (R-Kansas), you’ve been affected. So, too, if you’re House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana), Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) or Rep. Diana Harshbarger (R-Tennessee).

This week, NOTUS reported that Arnold & Porter, a major law firm headquartered in Washington, D.C., had $40,000 stolen from its federal PAC.

Arnold & Porter acknowledged NOTUS’ request for comment but did not provide additional details on the incident.

There is little a political committee can do to mitigate personal pressures that their treasurers and trusted financial officials are experiencing, nor can they do much to combat potential embezzlers rationalizing away their illicit activities.

Personal pressures and rationalization are two points of what’s known as the “fraud triangle” that anti-fraud professionals use to explain the psychology underpinning political and white-collar theft.

But political committees have control over the triangle’s third point: opportunity.

“In the end, you’d much rather spend $50,000 up front [on safeguards] than to find that somebody embezzled $1 million three years later,” Donna K. Pelham, educational content director at the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, told NOTUS. “When you look at the losses on the back end, you’re going to regret” not securing your political operation sooner, she added.

Several political campaigns and committees learned this particular lesson in the hardest of ways.

The National Venture Capital Association has spent months revising campaign reports to accurately report each of the more than 200 transactions Murphy made from the political committee to six personal bank accounts as an “unauthorized disbursement.” In letters to the FEC, the committee said it’s also been “implementing procedures to prevent a recurrence of these problems.”

Evan Keller, a spokesperson for the National Venture Capital Association, did not respond to requests for comment about what those procedures entail.

Virginia’s two U.S. senators were more forthcoming.

In the aftermath of Buchanan’s embezzlement, Kaine’s campaign hired a compliance firm and implemented internal controls including “requirements that checks for amounts over $1,000 be signed by two individuals; incoming checks be received by an individual who does not oversee the campaign’s accounting; and that campaign petty cash be limited, among other steps,” Janine Kritschgau, a spokesperson for Kaine, told NOTUS.

Warner’s campaign conducted a comprehensive financial review, hired a new compliance firm and treasurer, and implemented new financial controls and oversight that include “requiring signoff from multiple officials for expenditures and holding regular weekly meetings among finance and operations staff to review campaign finances and compliance procedures,” said Rachel Cohen, a Warner spokesperson.

“Campaigns and political committees should constantly evaluate and strengthen their financial oversight practices,” Cohen added. “Robust internal controls, independent compliance review, and regular monitoring are critical to protecting donor resources and maintaining public trust.”

Protecting donors’ trust is critical for political committees, said David P. Weber, a West Virginia University teaching professor specializing in fraud and forensic accounting.

“The risk to a committee or nonprofit organization of a fraud event, and future donor confidence in the organization from a major, newsworthy fraud, is a major risk for these groups,” Weber said.

Pelham told NOTUS that effective ways to prevent political committee fraud include surprise audits, allowing anonymous whistleblower tips from staffers, designating separate people for different financial jobs such as writing and depositing checks, and having more than one person with full access to financial information and accounts.

Organizations that have a political committee may also turn to their insurers, which often cover employee dishonesty.

After the daughter of the Seafarers International Union allegedly embezzled from union-linked PACs last year, Chubb gave one of the political committees nearly $293,000 for “insurance recovery” related to “embezzlements by former Treasurer,” according to an FEC report filed by the Seafarers Political Activity Donation PAC on April 20.

Chubb did not respond to requests for comment. No federal charges appear to have been filed against the PAC’s former treasurer.

In his years following cases of embezzlement from political committees, Mason told NOTUS that he’s seen “over and over” personal challenges such as alcoholism, gambling addiction and unhealthy romantic entanglements push people to take actions once unimaginable.

“These are crimes of human nature, and the thing that people have to realize is that good people do bad things,” Mason told NOTUS.

These crimes of human nature often have human consequences.

Beth Krom, who served from 2004 to 2008 as mayor of Irvine, California, hired Durkee as her campaign treasurer while running for Congress in 2010. Krom didn’t win the election, but her campaign avoided the kind of embezzlement that plagued Feinstein, attributing that to her committee’s internal financial controls.

Political embezzlers should certainly face appropriate legal consequences, Krom said, “but if I saw Kinde [Durkee] in the supermarket, I’d talk to her.”

“Hopefully people who do this learn from their mistakes and they find redemption,” Krom added.

To pay back the National Venture Capital Association, Murphy’s parents said they took on a new mortgage and his father has indefinitely postponed his planned retirement.

His parents are standing with him.

“Turning our backs on Jonas when he needed help was never an option — not then, and not now,” Murphy’s mother, Cathy, wrote in a letter to Judge Sullivan. She later added, “The cost to our family has been great, and we willingly paid it because we believe Jonas’s life has meaning and value.”