A former New York State Assembly candidate used fake donations and forged signatures to fraudulently inflate the share of public matching funds he received in last year’s election, federal prosecutors said on Friday.
The former candidate, Dao Yin, was charged with wire fraud in a federal criminal complaint. On Friday afternoon, he appeared before Magistrate Judge Vera Scanlon in Federal District Court in Brooklyn and was released on a $75,000 bond.
The charging of Mr. Yin, a Democrat who ran for a State Assembly seat in Queens, came a year after The New York Times published an investigation that found he appeared to have listed dozens of fake donors to increase his allotment of money under a new state matching-funds program meant to increase the power of donors making small political contributions.
Prosecutors said Mr. Yin, 62, had abused the system by using a scheme that The Times found yielded him more than $162,000 in matching funds. It was one of the largest sums received by an Assembly candidate last year, despite Mr. Yin’s relatively unheralded status.
He ultimately received 185 votes, or just 6 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary, in which he challenged Ronald Kim, an incumbent assemblyman. Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn opened a criminal investigation focused on Mr. Yin in November.
A lawyer for Mr. Yin, Benjamin Silverman, issued a statement on Friday saying that his client was “a hardworking immigrant who lived the American dream, including by running for office.”
Before facing Mr. Kim, Mr. Yin had sought office twice unsuccessfully. He ran for Queens borough president in 2020 and then for City Council the next year, receiving a total of more than $1 million through New York City’s matching funds program for the two races.
The state program is more generous than the city’s. Candidates in competitive state races can receive up to $12 for every dollar donated by residents of the district who make small donations; the city program matches such donations eight to one. Unlike the city program, the state program also has no spending limit.
Mr. Yin’s campaign filings contained glaring red flags, The Times found. Half of the money he raised directly from individuals came in cash, the least traceable form of donation. It was a much higher proportion than the 5.2 percent average for all other Assembly candidates who participated in the matching program.
At least 13 of Mr. Yin’s contribution cards contained false signatures, according to the Times investigation, and at least 26 people listed as Mr. Yin’s donors told The Times they had not donated to his campaign.
Only nine of 300 contribution cards he turned in contained the required contact information for the donors, including phone numbers and email addresses. Even so, the state Public Campaign Finance Board granted him matching public funds, records show.
Candidates must disclose certain information about their donors. But in Mr. Yin’s case, the board permitted waivers via ‘good-faith letters’ that supposedly documented his efforts to obtain the missing information from donors. He was not required to provide evidence that he had sent the letters.
Last October, federal agents searched Mr. Yin’s home and found unsent good-faith letters that he told the board he had mailed, along with letters to contributors that had been marked returned to sender, the complaint says. The agents also found contribution cards with email addresses that did not belong to the listed donors, the complaint says.
In interviews with The Times last year, Mr. Yin said he had personally collected every donation to his campaign, and he acknowledged that the irregularities could have been his fault.
After The Times published its investigation, the Public Campaign Finance Board unanimously adopted an emergency resolution meant to tighten its rules and prevent future abuses.
More than two dozen donors listed as contributors to Mr. Yin’s campaign told The Times they had never given money to it. Many expressed outrage that their names had been used.
Asif Alli, 48, who, along with two siblings, was among those falsely listed as donating to Mr. Yin, expressed relief at the former candidate’s arrest.
“This shows politicians can be held accountable,” Mr. Alli said.
William K. Rashbaum contributed reporting.
Santul Nerkar is a Times reporter covering federal courts in Brooklyn.
Jay Root is an investigative reporter for The Times based in Albany, N.Y., covering the people and events influencing — and influenced by — state and local government.
Bianca Pallaro is a Times reporter who combines traditional reporting with data analysis skills to investigate wrongdoing and explain complex issues by turning numbers into insightful information.
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