Brandon Anderson, founder of Raheem AI, an antipolice brutality charity, has been charged with diverting tens of thousands of dollars in donations from his organization to cover lavish vacations, designer clothes, and mansion rentals. 

D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb is suing Anderson, who has made calls to abolish the police, for his alleged theft and the organization, which failed to monitor Anderson’s spending habits.

Since 2021, Anderson has spent more than $40,000 on a luxury vacation rental service, $10,000 on hotels and Airbnbs for personal travel, $10,000 on designer clothing brands, and $5,000 on emergency veterinary services.

“Brandon Anderson misused charitable donations to fund lavish vacations and shopping sprees, and the Raheem AI Board of Directors let him get away with it,” Schwalb said in a statement. “Not only did their financial abuses violate fundamental principles of nonprofit governance, but Anderson and Raheem AI failed to pay their employees the wages they had earned. My office will not allow people to masquerade behind noble causes while violating the law, cheating taxpayers, or stealing from their workers.”

Anderson founded the charity in 2017 with the intent to “equip black, brown, and indigenous community crisis responders with the tools, training, connections, and funding they need to provide care.”

Raheem AI sought to hold police more accountable with projects that entailed creating an alternative to 911, such as dispatching aid workers to deal with nonviolent emergencies and building an app where people can file police complaints. 

It has raised more than $4.3 million from left-leaning groups. Anderson told donors he was inspired to create the nonprofit organization after his fiance, Raheem, was killed by authorities in Oklahoma in 2007.

Anderson’s organization started to fall apart in 2017 when a former staff member, Jasmine Banks, told the New York Times the nonprofit organization had stopped paying her salary, prompting her to comb through its financial records, which uncovered Anderson’s lavish spending.

Banks went to the organization’s board of supervisors, which was made up of three members, including Anderson, to alert them about the spending. The board told Banks that spending on items such as mansion rentals had been approved as part of work-related travel.

The two other board members besides Anderson later resigned, leaving him in sole control of the organization.

In the fallout, other employees started asking questions about Anderson and the organization’s origins. Under further scrutiny, employees found no evidence that Raheem, the organization’s namesake, ever existed.