Virginia Republicans are blasting Terry McAuliffe for his past investments in a scheme that used stolen identities of the terminally ill to deliver a profit to those who invested.
“According to reports, [Joseph] Caramadre took McAuliffe’s money and defrauded insurers by using stolen identities of terminally ill people using a loophole which permits the terminally ill patients to be annuitants on certain types of bonds,” Virginia house speaker Bill Howell told reporters in a conference call today.
“Now McAuliffe claims he was a passive investor and that he knew nothing about the decisions made by Caramadre, which is pretty hard to believe,” Howell added. “Who would ever blindly invest tens of thousands of dollars into a venture that they knew nothing about?”
McAuliffe’s campaign claims McAuliffe made a $47,000 profit from his investments with Caramadre, a sum which he donated to charity last week. “McAuliffe did give back the money he made off the terminally ill, but only after the public became aware of his shady business deal with Joseph Caramdre,” Virginia delegate Greg Habeeb said on the call. “If McAuliffe’s role in the federal investigation in Rhode Island never became public, McAuliffe would have kept the money.”
Virginia GOP chairman Pat Mullins challenged McAuliffe’s figures in an ethics complaint he filed yesterday, writing, “If McAuliffe invested $33,000 and profited $47,000, then he should have received a check for $80,000. However, under an itemized section in the 2011 federal indictment under ‘mail fraud,’ is a check for $113,057 from Midland National to Terry McAuliffe.”
Habeeb also faulted McAuliffe for not disclosing the investment during his 2009 gubernatorial bid. The Washington Post is reporting that the McAuliffe campaign denies any wrongdoing, but is not explaining why, beyond saying that McAuliffe’s lawyers and accountants at the time didn’t believe it was necessary.