The Heller for Senate campaign released their latest television ad—“WAKE UP”.
While Danny Tarkanian claims to be a political outsider, he is actually a professional politician that has been rejected five times for over a decade because of shady business deals, a legal malpractice lawsuit, and court sanctions. Now, as he runs yet again, Tarkanian is facing new questions after documents show he has taken over $700,000 from his children’s charity.
According to IRS filings and his financial disclosure form, Tarkanian has paid himself $662,791 in salary from the Tarkanian Basketball Academy—a 501c3—since 2004. But that’s not all he’s taken.
According to a report from Steve Sebelius earlier this week, $40,000 went from Tarkanian’s charity to his 2012 Congressional Campaign, and then ended up back in his personal account where he used it to pay his personal mortgage.
Danny Tarkanian took money from a children’s charity to pay bills for his political campaign and then used it to pay his home mortgage.
KLAS Channel 8’s Steve Sebelius reported that Danny Tarkanian took $40,000 from his children’s charity and moved it to his 2012 congressional campaign’s bank account to pay bills – he took money from a charity for kids and used it to finance his campaign for Congress.
Watch:
According to the report, the Tarkanian Basketball Academy—a 501c3 charity—loaned the Tarkanian-owned JAMD, LLC $40,000 on June 28, 2012. On that same day, Tarkanian withdrew $40,000 from JAMD’s account. Tarkanian then lent his 2012 campaign for Congress $40,000 the very next day just before a fundraising deadline.
Twelve days later, Tarkanian moved the money back from his campaign to his personal bank account and used the money as part of a $300,000 payment on his personal home mortgage – he paid his mortgage with money from a children’s charity.
And that’s not all Danny Tarkanian has taken from his children’s charity.
Documents show he has paid himself over $660,000 in salary from his children’s charity since 2005, and his salary has been as high as 25 percent of the charity’s annual budget – even when the charity ran major budget deficits – Danny took six figure paychecks.
Mysteriously, Tarkanian didn’t take a salary from 2011-2013 while he was being sued for defaulting on a loan to build a resort in southern California and ended up filing for bankruptcy. Even more suspicious, the charity had never paid a dollar for management costs before those years but suddenly spent $149,500 on “management costs” while Tarkanian was in court. Public filings do not show who was paid the money.
IRS documents show Tarkanian began taking a six-figure salary again around the time he settled his bankruptcy case and owed the FDIC $525,000 for the failed development scheme. Then oddly the nonprofit’s “management costs” abruptly went back to $0.
While Danny Tarkanian gave himself a massive raise in 2014, the children’s charity began bleeding money.
In 2014, Tarkanian paid himself $127,000 while the charity spent $46,000 more than it raised.
But those numbers pale in comparison to the following year when Tarkanian reported taking a whopping $162,000 in salary while the basketball academy ran an enormous $114,000 budget deficit in 2015.
While IRS documents are not available, Tarkanian reported taking $237,000 in salary from 2016-2017 in the financial disclosure forms he filed with the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Ethics.
According to thecharity’s website, the Tarkanian Basketball Academy charges kids as young as kindergarten-age $125 per month to train at the facility. Instead of reinvesting the charity’s profits into programs or lowering prices for the kids, Tarkanian took the money for himself.
