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Bosworth Gambling with Base Connect: Who’s Scamming Whom?

Last updated on 2016.01.02

Various sources have been rumbling that fake U.S. Senate candidate Annette Bosworth is using Base Connect to raise campaign funds. Since the FEC has not yet posted Bosworth's purportedly surprising Q4 campaign finance report, the only evidence we have of a Bosworth–Base Connect connection is the following Facebook post, in which Base Connect promotes Dr. Bosworth's fight against flesh-eating bacteria in Haiti:

Base Connect Facebook post, screen cap, 2014.02.10
Base Connect Facebook post, screen cap, 2014.02.10

Base Connect has taken time to "Like" Bosworth's photos of herself and her sleep-deprived son at a November debate in Sioux Falls. Base Connect's Facebook page gets a like from fake supporter "McCook County for Dr. Bosworth-US Senate."

If Bosworth is using Base Connect to raise money, someone is getting played.

Base Connect, née BMW Direct, has a long history of fleecing long-shot candidates (and no one is long-shottier than Annette Bosworth). They use direct mail to scare up big dollars, then charge candidates 80% to as much as 96% of the take. Base Connect exploited the Sharron Angle failure in Nevada in 2010. Rep. Allen West had the good sense to drop this "subprime fundraiser" after 2010, but the conservative company continues to turn his and other candidates' mailing lists into profits.

Only a desperate person would resort to the payday-lending model under which Base Connect exploits candidates. The financially challenged Bosworth is just that desperate. Here's my speculation as to how Bosworth and her quiet Svengali, self-imagined world dominator Chad Haber, are playing this game:

  • At some point in her incessant harassment of Washington conservative groups, some adjutant for Ted Cruz or Jim DeMint said, "Look, lady: if you can't raise a hundred thousand dollars, there's no point in calling us."
  • Bosworth and Haber took that dismissal as encouragement and decided they needed to cook up another money-making scheme.
  • They enlisted Base Connect to inflate their fourth-quarter fundraising to some wildly impressive level.
  • Base Connect funneled the $315K we're hearing bandied about in the press by December 31.
  • Base Connect won't send Bosworth their bill for eighty-plus percent until the end of this quarter.
  • That leaves Bosworth with three months to spend money that's not hers, just as she did with her raffle money.
  • In three months, Bosworth uses that cash to buy signatures to get on the ballot, to pay off raffle ticket holders to stave off bad press, and most importantly to convince Ted Cruz and other DC observers to throw more money her way.
  • By March 31, Bosworth has enough new money in hand to pay off the gamble she laid on the table with Base Connect.

Can you feel the Ponzi scheme at work here?

If Base Connect is boosting Bosworth, we have a classic game of chicken between two scammers. Bosworth is gambling that either she'll make enough money to pay off Base Connect or she'll be able to simply skip out on her financial obligation to Base Connect just as she has to many of her employees. But Base Connect are no dummies. They read the news. They know Bosworth and Haber are tricksters. They are gambling on their own skills and on the fact that Bosworth is now playing a much more public scam than anything she's done before, a scam with too many people watching for her to be able to dine and dash.

This is all speculation until we see the 2013 Q4 FEC report... and the 2014 Q1 report. But if that $315K materializes, if it isn't just another Annette Bosworth/Patrick Davis fabrication, whether or not it came from Base Connect, it will prove that fools and their money are soon parted.

5 Comments

  1. oldguy 2014.02.10

    I have been waiting to see who her donors were that totaled $315,000 as I think this is a fraud.

  2. Nick Nemec 2014.02.10

    If in fact this conjecture is the scheme Bosworth is running, wouldn't Base Connect have some way to hold on to their share of the dough to prevent another scam artist scamming them?

    Now I'm really interested in learning where or iif she has raised any dough.

  3. Jim 2014.02.10

    She needs support from people who actually can vote in SD, not down in the Bible Belt.

  4. caheidelberger Post author | 2014.02.11

    Nick, viewed objectively, no Ponzi scheme ever looks like a good idea. But if we think like gamblers and schemers....

  5. Jerry 2014.02.11

    Anyone hear anything from that Brendan Johnson? I think that this would be just another in a line of items for him to investigate as a Ponzi Scheme is kind of illegal and it crosses state lines, but maybe it is just me. Eb-5, Ponzi Scheme's, possible murder, Chinese, Russians, good grief, only in a republican controlled state do you get to see this amount of corruption. Soon, the big boy from Jersey will visit us to get some pointers.

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