Steve Bannon associate gets over 5 years in border wall scheme

A Steve Bannon associate was sentenced to over five years in prison Tuesday for a scheme to rip off donors of a fundraising campaign to build a border wall with Mexico in order to “line his own pockets,” prosecutors announced.

Timothy Shea, 52, of Castle Rock, Colorado, was sentenced in Manhattan federal court on Tuesday to 5 years and 3 months in prison after he was convicted for his role in bilking donors who contributed to the “We Build The Wall” GoFundMe campaign.

The campaign raised over $25 million and it is believed that hundreds of thousands of dollars were stolen.

“Timothy Shea abused the trust of donors to ‘We Build the Wall,’ stole hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations to line his own pockets, and attempted to obstruct the federal investigation of his criminal conduct,” Manhattan US Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement. 

“The defendant has now been held accountable and faces prison time for his crimes.”

A jury found Shea guilty of wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering and obstruction of justice in October.

As part of the sentencing, he was also ordered to pay over $3.6 million in restitution and forfeitures.

Shea was charged in 2020 alongside Bannon, the chairman of the fundraiser, Brian Kolfage and Andrew Badolato.

But Shea was the only one of the defendants to go to trial after Kolfage and Badolato took guilty pleas.

Bannon, the former chief strategist for Trump when he was in office, was pardoned by President Trump before he left office. Bannon still faces state charges for the scheme that were not covered under Trump’s pardon.

Kolfage, 41, was sentenced in April to four years behind bars for embezzling $350,000 from the campaign. In April, Badolato, 58, was sentenced to three years in prison.

Shea’s criminal defense attorneys didn’t immediately return a request for comment Tuesday.