In early 2016, prosecutors say Pugh and Brown decided to “secretly” donate book-sale money to the campaign ― an action that could have been done legally under Maryland law, because candidates may contribute an unlimited amount of their own campaigns. But because Pugh and Brown believed “that if the voters learned that Pugh had injected her own money into the campaign, she would appear desperate," they decided to make “contributions to her campaign in other people’s names, i.e., to use straw donors, which is a violation of Maryland’s election laws,” according to the indictment.