The political nonprofit launched by Sen. Bernie Sanders in 2016 lost nearly a quarter-million dollars to an email scam that year, according to new tax documents obtained by POLITICO.

Our Revolution “was the victim of a Business E-Mail Compromise scam that took place in December 2016 but was not discovered until January 2017, resulting in the loss of approximately $242,000 via an electronic transfer of funds to an overseas account,” the group disclosed in its tax forms covering the year 2017, which were filed earlier this month.


“Our Revolution worked with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Our Revolution's counsel and an independent cyber-security consultant in an effort to identify the thieves and to recover the funds but, unfortunately, these efforts were unsuccessful.”

Morning Score newsletter Your guide to the permanent campaign — weekday mornings, in your inbox. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. {{#success}} {{heading}} {{message}} {{heading}} {{message}} More Subscriptions {{message}}

According to the FBI, the type of hack is also known as a “CEO impersonation.” In a common version of the scam, perpetrators infiltrate a company’s computer network and then make a fake wire transfer request that looks like it’s from a vendor with which the firm frequently does business. The type of scam had resulted in billions of dollars in losses, the FBI wrote in 2017.

Our Revolution blamed “an international syndicate of cyber-thieves targeting nonprofit organizations globally” for the incident, which robbed the group of about 7 percent of its total fundraising in 2016. The group said in its tax filing that it "continues to put into place additional safeguards, including both technical and human security measures, procedures and protocols.”

The incident highlights the cyber threat facing political organizations, which handle sensitive information and millions of dollars — but where security has long been an afterthought for busy staffers with varied levels of experience. The breach of Our Revolution took place at a time of growing cybersecurity awareness in the Democratic Party and progressive movement, following revelations earlier in 2016 that Russian intelligence officers had hacked into the Democratic National Committee and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, as well as the private email of Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.


The money stolen had been raised as part of a campaign to aid the Standing Rock Sioux Native American tribe, which was protesting the construction of an oil pipeline near tribal land, said Lucy Flores, a former Our Revolution board member. The group still gave the tribe the $242,924 it promised, using other funds it had raised, according to its tax filing.

“We’d done fundraising specifically on behalf of the tribe, and to have that money just be gone and never reach its intended purpose was unacceptable,” Flores told POLITICO. “So we decided to give them the money that was raised and take the loss as an organization.”

Our Revolution president Nina Turner added in a statement that after “the discovery of the theft, we hired a cybersecurity firm to advise us on how to prevent these types of crimes in the future.”

The financial loss is coming to light nearly two years after the fact because the group, which Sanders launched in 2016 as an organizing hub after his presidential campaign before stepping back from its operations, is set up as a “social welfare” nonprofit instead of a political action committee. Political committees have to file regular reports with the Federal Election Commission or Internal Revenue Service itemizing their fundraising and spending.


As a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, Our Revolution has instead filed two yearly tax returns covering 2016 and 2017. The forms give broad overviews of the group’s finances, but they do not fully describe specific donations or outlays — which is why critics label such groups “dark money” organizations.

Our Revolution self-publishes donor names (but not amounts) on its website, though it has not updated that section of the site since the first quarter of 2018.

The group raised $3.42 million in 2016, after its founding in July of that year, and raised $3.45 million in 2017, mostly from small online contributions. Our Revolution spent nearly $3.2 million in 2017, including over $1 million on salaries, over $489,000 on grants to other organizations and $258,000 on digital messaging.

Our Revolution also accepted seven contributions of $5,000 or more in 2017, according to its return, which redacts the names of the donors who gave them. By far the biggest contribution, $100,000, came from the Sixteen Thirty Fund, another D.C.-based progressive nonprofit, according to that group’s tax filings.

In addition to the money given to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in 2017, Our Revolution also distributed over $126,000 in grants to four state-based Our Revolution groups in Maryland, Massachusetts, Texas and Wisconsin. Our Revolution gave a further $100,000 to the Progressive Change Campaign Committee for a “training event” and distributed $12,500 to the Rights and Democracy Education Fund, a nonprofit based in Burlington, Vt.