This story was produced in partnership with KXAS-TV (NBC-5)

Over coffee at Café Brazil, Joe Tave was happy to get a $100 contribution for his City Council campaign from a local politician, Larry Duncan.

But as Tave prepared to leave the Bishop Arts coffee shop, Duncan said he had rounded up other donations. He handed Tave an envelope filled with checks totaling $5,000, a significant slug of money for the council challenger.

“It kind of just blew me away,’’ Tave recalled of the spring 2015 meeting. He knew Duncan, a former council member who at the time was president of the board of Dallas County Schools, an agency that managed buses for school districts. But Tave didn’t know any of the contributors.

Robert Leonard (left), CEO of Force Multiplier, and Larry Duncan, former president of the board of trustees for the Dallas County Schools bus agency, at a social gathering.

The checks came from people tied to Force Multiplier Solutions, a Louisiana company that sold security cameras for school buses, The Dallas Morning News has learned. The company is now under investigation by the FBI in the bribery case shaking the agency Duncan headed.

Tave wasn't the only candidate to get money from those associated with the firm. Force Multiplier's CEO, Robert Leonard, and other associates pumped at least $78,000 into the campaigns of 15 council candidates between 2013 and 2016, The News' analysis shows.

Five current council members were among those who received donations. They said they didn’t know the money came from people linked to the bus-camera company.

One of the council members, Scott Griggs, noted that he ran unopposed and received his donations after he had been re-elected. “Some people write checks to whoever wins,’’ he said.

But the payments reveal a wide effort by associates of Force Multiplier and the bus agency to steer money to Dallas politicians, sometimes using Duncan as a middleman.

The company and the agency had millions of dollars riding on their partnership, which allowed them to split any revenue raised by ticketing drivers who were caught on camera illegally passing school buses. They also planned to sell surveillance cameras to other school districts.

In 2015, the company and the agency needed approval from the City Council to continue the ticketing program. In exchange, Dallas County Schools was running the school crossing guard program, which saved the city millions of dollars.

The council voted to extend the deal for 25 years, despite complaints that it had not gotten an in-depth briefing on the project. Council member Jennifer Staubach Gates, who did not receive contributions from the company's associates, was the only member to vote against the deal.

Follow the money

Associates of a Louisiana school bus camera company gave at least $78,000 to 15 Dallas City Council candidates between 2013 and 2016, a News analysis shows. The company, Force Multiplier Solutions, partnered with Dallas County Schools in a failed business deal that's under FBI investigation. Touch photos for more info.

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The bus agency has since collapsed because of financial losses related to the camera deals. In November, voters decided to dissolve the agency.

A Louisiana businessman associated with the camera company recently pleaded guilty in federal court in Dallas to money laundering for funneling payments to the superintendent of the agency in return for bus-camera contracts. The businessman, Slater Swartwood, and his lawyer did not respond to questions for this report.

A company owned by Swartwood also paid tens of thousands of dollars in consulting fees to council member Dwaine Caraway, who championed the bus-camera deals, NBC5 and The News reported last week. The company also made a $20,000 home loan to Caraway's parents. Caraway says he did nothing improper.

The News found no campaign contributions from Swartwood or Force Multiplier to Caraway's council campaigns. He did receive $7,000 from Leonard and his wife during his unsuccessful run for county commissioner in 2016. A $200 donation was made in the name of Leonard's dog, Jack.

In an interview with NBC5, councilman Dwaine Caraway says the money he received from businessman Slater Swartwood "probably doesn't look too good.'' He insists he's done nothing wrong.

In the Dallas council races, the Force Multiplier campaign contributors abided by the city’s $1,000 limit on individual donations, which were disclosed in candidates’ finance reports.

But the public wouldn’t know about the donors’ relationships to the camera company from those reports. The contributors’ employers and occupations weren’t included in the forms, despite boxes asking for the information. Such omissions are common in council races and legal under Texas and city rules.

The News made the company connections using other public records.

Force Multiplier CEO Leonard and his wife, Linda, shelled out the most money: $32,000 between 2013 and 2016. The bulk of the funds came from a Louisiana address, records show.

The Leonards gave most of that cash — a total of $22,000 — in 2015, putting them among the top 10 individual donors to City Council races that year.

Swartwood and three of his family members gave a total of $28,000 from 2013 to 2016, records show. Most of those donations list a Louisiana address.

Out-of-state donations are fairly rare in Dallas council races — about 95 percent of contributions in these elections has come from Texas, based on filings since 2008.

At least four council candidates who received money tied to Force Multiplier Solutions told The News that Duncan rounded up the contributions and sometimes delivered them in person.

Duncan himself received $245,000 in campaign donations from Leonard, Swartwood and other Force Multiplier associates when he was president of the Dallas County Schools board of trustees.

Duncan told NBC5 last year that the contributions were proper and that they didn't cloud his judgment. Texas law allows unlimited contributions to candidates unless a local government caps them. Dallas County Schools, unlike the city of Dallas, didn't impose caps.

In the council races, several candidates that the company’s associates supported received $10,000 or more. They included Bobby Abtahi, who got $12,000 in 2013, and Tiffinni Young, who received $10,000 in 2015. Both had been board appointees of Caraway's. Their totals, like Tave’s, were higher because they received contributions in both the general and runoff elections.

Abtahi, a lawyer and current park board president, said he doesn’t really know Duncan, doesn’t know the Force Multiplier representatives at all and didn’t realize he received contributions from them until a reporter pointed them out.

Young, who lost her re-election bid in 2017, wouldn’t comment this week, abruptly shutting the door on a reporter.

Other candidates who were elected to the council in 2015 — Adam McGough, Mark Clayton and Erik Wilson — also said they didn’t know the Force Multiplier people who contributed to their races.

But they knew that Duncan, a council member from 1991 to 1999, was helping them.

"I don't remember where I saw Duncan,’’ said Clayton, who was a political novice before running for the council. “But I'm sure I was griping about, 'Oh my God, I've got to raise money.’ He was like, 'I'll help you. I raise a lot of money.’ ... I was just thankful that it's like, 'Wow, somebody's actually helping me on my campaign.'

"Now, good Lord, if I would've known then what I know now, I wouldn't have taken it."

The council’s 2015 vote to extend the bus contract is one that Mayor Mike Rawlings has said he regrets, calling it “one of the dumbest things that the City Council did.’’

Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings called the City Council's vote to approve a bus agreement with Dallas County Schools one of the "dumbest'' decisions it has ever made.

Council member Philip Kingston, who said he knew Duncan but not the Force Multiplier people who donated $3,000 to his campaign, said he believed his vote to extend the bus-camera program was right at the time.

But in hindsight, Kingston said, he would like to have a bus-camera program “that's run by honest people.’’

Some of the transactions raise questions about whether the company’s associates should have formed a political action committee to make their contributions, instead of doing so individually, ethics experts say.

Working as a PAC, they would have been able to donate only $2,500 per candidate, and the source of the funds would have been more transparent.

Voters chose to abolish the Dallas County Schools bus agency last November in the wake of NBC-5 reports on financial mismanagement.

A PAC is “a group of persons who have a shared purpose to support certain actions,’’ said Ian Steusloff, general counsel with the Texas ethics commission.

Steusloff declined to comment on the Dallas contributions but said his agency could investigate if it received a complaint.

One expert said he’s disturbed by the passing of envelopes over coffee.

“The idea that you’re delivering this money outside the official campaign and campaign facilities makes any observer wince,’’ said Cal Jillson, professor of political science at Southern Methodist University. “This kind of stuff should not be done surreptitiously.’’

Tave, who received the envelope of $5,000 checks from Duncan at the cafe, opened it when he got to his car. That’s when he saw that some of the checks listed Louisiana addresses.

He said he had “no earthly idea’’ who the contributors were and didn’t ask Duncan.

Tave finished second in the May 2015 general election but lost in the runoff a month later to Casey Thomas. Tave reported campaign donations of more than $60,000 in 2015, including the $10,000 total from people tied to Force Multiplier.

Scott Friedman and Jack Douglas Jr. of NBC-5 contributed to this report.