Progress Now Action

Bob's got some splainin' to do. The Grand Junction Sentinel reports:

The founder of a nonprofit linked to Republican U.S. Senate candidate Bob Schaffer was convicted late Wednesday of defrauding the federal government in receiving $3.6 million in alternative-fuel research funds. . .

According to court records, Orr defrauded Congress into awarding a 2002 earmark to a nonprofit he founded for an Environmental Protection Agency grant to test an alternative fuel additive called “vapor phase combustion.”

More than $2 million of the revenue actually made it into the coffers of the nonprofit Orr founded in 2001, the National Alternative Fuels Foundation, to handle the EPA grant funds.

Schaffer, according to his Senate financial disclosure, was a member of the board of directors of the National Alternative Fuels Foundation from October 2004 to March 2005.

Schaffer’s tenure at the foundation, according to Orr’s 2006 indictment, overlaps with the time period Orr’s foundation was accepting the fraudulently obtained federal funds.

Dick Wadhams, Schaffer’s campaign manager, said Schaffer joined the nonprofit because he was interested in the development of alternative fuels, including those purportedly being developed by the foundation.

Wadhams said Schaffer left the firm as soon as he learned about the investigation. “

He was only on the board a little more than four months,” Wadhams said. “As soon as he found out the problems with Mr. Orr, he resigned from the board.”

Wadhams said Schaffer was not involved in securing the earmark for Orr when Schaffer was a member of Congress from 1997 to 2002.

This opens a HUUUUUGE can of worms for Schaffer an begs a LOT of questions. What did Schaffer know, and when did he know it? What should he have known? Did Schaffer have anything to do with securing the earmark for Orr? Did he really cut ties with this group? And are Bob Schaffer and Dick Wadhams actually the same person?Al Lewis from the Denver Post weighs in:

Schaffer joined the board at the behest of his longtime political associate Scott Shires, a notable GOP operative.

Shires pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor in the case. His sentencing is slated for June 23. He faces up to a year in prison and a $25,000 fine.

If Schaffer and the members of Congress who put up the $3.6 million earmark are indeed Orr's victims, it's hard to imagine how they could be such easy marks.

Years before Orr set his sights on them, he was allegedly fleecing guys like Larry Potthoff, a Franktown general contractor, who told me he lost about $13,000 to Orr beginning in the mid-1990s.

"He kept sending letters, saying he's talking to Saudi Arabia . . . and on and on and on. But you could never get him on the phone. . . . He used Scott Shires as his go-between guy," Potthoff said. "I called several times and told him I wanted my money back. No response."