Guy Adams
The Independent
September 15, 2011
She is being described as “the Bernie Madoff of campaign finance”. No one yet knows how long her apparent scam had been running, or how much money may be missing. But some alleged victims say they have been “nearly wiped out”.
Kinde Durkee, a political consultant who organised financial affairs for dozens of California’s top Democrats, has been arrested and charged with stealing millions of dollars from their campaign war chests, in the run-up to the 2012 election season.
The money, including large donations from leading figures in the Hollywood community, is believed to have funded Ms Durkee’s comfortable lifestyle. Some was supposedly used to pay off credit card bills; other tranches of cash covered mortgage payments and nursing home fees for her elderly mother.
Fresh victims are emerging daily. They include Dianne Feinstein, a prominent US senator whose office say they “don’t know right now” what has become of $5.2m (£3.3m), and Susan A Davis, a San Diego congresswoman who wrote a letter to supporters yesterday saying “we have been robbed!”
Ms Davis believes that at least $250,000 is missing from her campaign’s bank accounts. “As this scandal emerges, she [Durkee] may well become known as the Bernie Madoff of campaign finance treasurers,” Ms Davis wrote in her letter.
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