Notorious MAGA Fraudsters Back at It Again With New Scam

Two election fraudsters and MAGA conspiracy theorists, Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman, have been using fake names to run a start-up that promised to integrate A.I. into lobbying, according to a Politico report published Sunday.

LobbyMatic was founded in 2022 by right-wing agitator Wohl (using the alias “Jay Klein”) and his D.C. lobbyist buddy Burkman (under the name “Bill Sanders”), according to four former employees who spoke anonymously with Politico, to prevent retaliation.

Ahead of the 2020 general election, Wohl and Burkman organized a campaign of robocalls to predominantly Black neighborhoods across several states, urging residents not to attempt mail-in voting. The messages, which claimed that mail-in voting could lead to compromised personal data, mentioned Wohl and Burkman by name, making them easy to identify—and convict of telecom fraud.

The Federal Communications Commission fined the duo $5 million, and a judge in Ohio ordered them to spend 500 hours registering people to vote. In 2023, a New York federal judge found Wohl and Burkman guilty of violating the Voting Rights Act and the Ku Klux Klan Act, and in April, New York Attorney General Letitia James reached a settlement with the pair, ordering them to pay “up to $1.25 million.”

Perhaps the two fraudsters learned not to put their names on their schemes—and apparently cooked up totally new identities to start their newest venture. Still, Wohl and Burkman had difficulty keeping their new identities straight. Three former employees told Politico that there were several instances in which people, including Burkman, referred to “Jay Klein” as Jacob.

At LobbyMatic, things were not going particularly well. Former employees said that the company repeatedly missed payroll, and although its website listed job openings, Wohl said that they were not hiring.

Instead of hiring real workers, Wohl appeared to have invented a female vice president named “Pat Smith.” Wohl apparently told three employees that she didn’t exist and that it was best to use a good-looking blonde woman when trying to make introductions.

Additionally, the company, which was not officially registered in Virginia, lacked occupancy and renovation permits for its office, according to Politico.

“Jay/Jacob was out of touch with reality,” one former employee told Politico. “Working for them you knew you were never getting the full story and were often left trying to find the truth. If I had to sum up my work experience for them, I would describe them as living with their head in the clouds and in a false reality.”

That employee told Politico that they once accompanied “Sanders” to a house in Arlington, Virginia, which was actually owned by Burkman. The house’s front steps were the site of some of Wohl and Burkman’s infamous press conferences, where they elevated their outlandish conspiracy theories and smear campaigns, including but not limited to claims that Pete Buttigieg and Robert Mueller had committed sexual assault and that Senator Elizabeth Warren was having an affair with a Marine.

The employee who went to Burkman’s house told Politico that they’d grown suspicious that something was amiss after hearing Wohl referred to as Jacob and after witnessing him express reservations about obtaining business licenses. The employee eventually took a photo of their employer and did a quick reverse image search, which confirmed Wohl’s true identity.

Former employees were able to identify “Sanders” as being the same man who appeared in a 2022 Netflix crime docuseries using his real name, Burkman.

According to former employees, LobbyMatic had three brand-name clients: Toyota, drug company Lantheus, and Boundary Stone Partners, a consulting firm. Representatives from Toyota and Lantheus said they’d signed up for the company’s three-month free trial, which had since expired. Jeff Navin, a co-founder of Boundary Stone Partners, told Politico the company had tried out LobbyMatic’s service and “quickly determined the tool did not work and terminated our contract two months ago.”