Date: July 23, 2024 Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov BOSTON — A former candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in the 3rd Congressional District of Massachusetts was sentenced on July 18th in federal court in Boston for charges of violating the Federal Election Campaign Act and false statements. Abhijit Das, a/k/a “Beej,” of North Andover, was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Richard G. Stearns to 21 months in prison, to be followed by one year of supervised release. Das was also ordered to pay a fine of $25,000. In October 2023, Das was convicted of one count of accepting excessive campaign contributions, one count of conduit contributions, one count of conversion of campaign funds and two counts of making a false statement. “Campaign finance laws exist to protect the rights of voters to transparency and accountability. Due to his greed and lies, Das violated those rights,” said Acting United States Attorney Joshua S. Levy. “When political candidates violate the law, it erodes the public’s trust in the process. It is imperative that we continue to uphold the integrity of the electoral process by holding candidates accountable.” “When congressional candidates blatantly violate campaign finance laws for personal gain, like Abhijit Das did, they breach the trust of their donors –and break the law,” said Jodi Cohen, Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Boston Division. “In this case, Mr. Das attempted to corrupt a free and fair election by ignoring campaign finance limits, reporting requirements, and using the contributions he illegally solicited to pay off the debts of his failing hotel businesses. The FBI is determined to protect the integrity of our electoral system and will not let corruption like this go unchecked.” Das was a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in the 3rd Congressional District of Massachusetts in the 2017-2018 election. To inflate his fundraising numbers, Das devised a scheme in or about December 2017 to solicit personal loans from friends and close associates in excess of the $2,700 legal limit. On or about Dec. 17, 2017, Das emailed a contributor asking for a friend to support his campaign to reach a specific fundraising goal of over $450,000 by the end of the year and indicated that reaching that goal might need “some engineering.” Das advised a member of his campaign that he would “aggregate” the loans into “one batch” and execute a main transfer into the campaign account. Further, Das caused three different individuals to contribute approximately $125,000 to his campaign and structured the contributions as personal loans to a family member to circumvent Federal Election Commission (FEC) reporting requirement and contribution limits. Das falsely claimed that the funds from the excessive contributions were his own personal funds and engaged in illegal conduit contributions to his campaign. In addition, between January and May 2018, Das withdrew approximately $314,500 in funds from his campaign account and used at least $267,000 of these funds to pay outstanding debts for his hotel business relating to vendors, the hotel’s yacht and real estate taxes unrelated to his congressional campaign. In making these withdrawals, Das sought to conceal his conversion of campaign funds by instructing bank tellers to report the withdrawals as separate withdrawal and deposit transactions, rather than direct transfers. Das aided and abetted in the submission of false information in quarterly reports to the FEC by overstating the amount of cash-on-hand the Das-for-Congress Campaign had in its campaign bank account. For example, in June 2018, Das reported that his campaign’s total amount of cash-on-hand was approximately $440,000, when in fact the amount of cash-on-hand in the campaign bank account was less than $5,000. In June 2023, Das was separately indicted by a federal grand jury in Boston on 10 counts of wire fraud, alleging he diverted more than $5 million in escrow funds from his clients’ accounts for personal expenses. Das has pleaded not guilty and has been on release pending trial in that case. He is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law. Acting U.S. Attorney Levy, Harry Chavis, Jr., Special Agent in Charge of the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS CI), Boston Field Office, and FBI Boston SAC Cohen made the announcement. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Neil J. Gallagher Jr. and Elysa Wan of the Public Corruption & Special Prosecutions Unit prosecuted the case. CI is the criminal investigative arm of the IRS, responsible for conducting financial crime investigations, including tax fraud, narcotics trafficking, money-laundering, public corruption, healthcare fraud, identity theft and more. CI special agents are the only federal law enforcement agents with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code, obtaining a more than a 90 percent federal conviction rate. The agency has 20 field offices located across the U.S. and 12 attaché posts abroad.
