Behind the viral #GoFundTheWall fundraiser, a rising conservative star and a shadowy email harvesting operation
Brian Kolfage, a triple-amputee Air Force veteran, has operated fake news websites and fundraisers to build a lucrative email list.
Jan. 12, 2019
By Brandy Zadrozny and Ben Collins

The GoFundMe fundraiser that promised to help privately fund President Donald Trump's plan for a wall spanning the length of the U.S.-Mexico border surpassed $20 million dollars in donations this week. But the man behind it — Brian Kolfage, a rising conservative media star — may have had another goal.

Through his border-wall campaign, he claims to have gathered 3.5 million email addresses, which are essential to his broader operation — a wide-ranging and multipronged effort to collect a list of Trump supporters who have proven to be sources of donations for conservative efforts, former employees told NBC News.

According to former employees and public records including website archives, Nevada business registrations and property records, Kolfage has repeatedly created GoFundMe campaigns and published inflammatory fake news articles, pushing them both from websites that he sought to hide behind shell companies and false identities, in part to harvest email addresses. Those addresses were then used to push people back to Kolfage’s websites, to sell a brand of coffee he owns, or to be stockpiled for future use by conservative campaigns.
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