Republican challenger demands Lafazan repay Bankman-Fried campaign contributions

                                                                            

Paolo Pironi

Josh Lafazan

It may still be 2022 but the 2023 county election campaign has begun.

Last week, Republican Paolo Pironi, a businessman who came close to beating incumbent Legis. Joshua Lafazan of Woodbury last year, announced he is back in the race for the 18th legislative seat.

And he demanded that Lafazan, who switched his voter registration from non-affiliated to Democrat before he ran unsuccessfully for Congress this year, give back the tens of thousands of dollars in campaign donations he received from a PAC bankrolled by former cryptocurrency king Sam Bankman-Fried.

Bankman-Fried, head of the now bankrupt FTX cryptocurrency exchange, was arrested last week and charged with swindling $8 billion dollars from investors while fraudulently diverting the money for personal use and illlegal campaign contributions, mostly to Democrats.

Bankman-Fried and fellow FTX executives poured at least $70 milllion into 2022 election campaigns, NBC News  reported.

 Federal prosecutors say they intend to claw back as much money as they can to repay investors, saying Bankman-Fried had led of “one of the biggest financial frauds in American history.”

In a news release as well as a post on his Facebook page, Pironi said, "I call on Josh Lafazan to return the more than half million  dollars in stolen funds used to fund his unsuccessful congressional campaign."

Pironi added, "To secure over a half million dollars in dark money campaign ads, Lafazan abused his position in the County Legislature to curry favor with Sam Bankman-Fried. From creating a taxpayer-funded 'Crypotocurrency' Task force, to writing op-eds and lobbying elected officials, Lafazan helped legitimize this ponzi-scheme to attract tens of thousands of dollars in campaign assistance.

"It's time that Josh Lafazan be held accountable for his actions."

 

Lafazan did not return a request for comment.

Pironi actually beat Lafazan on Election Night last year 7,136  to 6,891 votes, when voting machines were counted. But absentee ballots put Lafazan over the top with 7,733 to 7513 votes, according to Newsday.

At the time, Lafazan was running on the Democratic line even though he was not registered in either party. He turned Democrat immediately after winning his county seat to run for the Democratic Congressional primary.

Lafazan has not announced whether he will run for county legislator again. At the same time, new boundaries for the 18th District have yet to be approved by the county legislature as part of redistricting.

Now back to Bankman-Fried.

Bankman-Fried essentially funded a PAC called "Protect our Future," which paid for commercials touting Democratic candidates this year, including Lafazan, who was seeking the Congressional seat being vacated by U.S. Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-Glen Cove) and Laura Gillen, who ran unsuccessfully to fill the Congressional seat given up by U.S. Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-Garden City.).

Fox News reports that Bankman-Fried's contribution of $27 mllion  accounted for roughly 95% of the roughly $28.5 million raised by the PAC since it was created early this year. The only other major contributor to the PAC was Nishad Singh — Bankman-Fried's business partner and top FTX executive — who gave $1 million to the group the same day Bankman-Fried wired his initial contribution in February.

It appears that Pironi may have underestimated the value of the contributions Lafazan received from Bankman-Fried.

According to ProPublica, Protect our Future gave $710,849 to Lafazan.

                                                                              

From ProPublica list of Protect Our Future contributions

 

Pironi is right about Lafazan's support for cryptocurrency during his primary campaign for Congress. 

He posted on his Facebook page an op-ed that he submitted to the Syosset Advance. And tweeted his support for cryptocurrency "as a force for good in the world."

                                                                              

But according to legislative staff, Lafazan never filed a bill to create a cryptocurrency task force in Nassau County.

Interesting that Nassau and state Democratic Chairman Jay Jacobs in August expressed unease with Bankman-Fried's contributions.  

Jacobs told Newsday,  “I’m just not a big fan of rich people looking to impact elections because they’ve got money.”

Now, Lafazan supporters say federal prosecutors can't demand that Lafazan return Bankman-Fried'scontributions because they were given through an independent PAC.

But isn't that just a shell game, since Bankman-Fried essentially bankrolled the PAC? Guess that's up for the prosecutors to decide.