The AP III militia's fraudulent charity front group
While digging through the Paramilitary Leaks dataset, I came across American Community Outreach Network (ACON), a now-defunct front group that American Patriots Three Percent used to accept donations.
In leaked internal militia chats, video, and voice messages, AP III militia leaders repeatedly claimed that ACON was a 501c3 tax-exempt non-profit organization. This was a lie.
AP III founder Scot Seddon sold the organization as a get-rich-quick scheme, leading some members to express a wish to work on it full-time. They even ran a possibly-illegal lottery, in collaboration with another extremist group, offering the winner 1000 rounds of 9mm ammunition.
This is the third installment of my series on exploring the Paramilitary Leaks. The first two posts were aimed at helping journalists and researchers dig into this dataset themselves. This one, on the other hand, is exposing some of the details I've uncovered in the leak myself – along with how I found them. Here are the other parts:
- Part 1: Exploring the Paramilitary Leaks
- Part 2: Step-by-step guide to reading the leaked militia chats yourself
If you're interested in this dataset, please subscribe to get these posts emailed directly to your inbox. If you want to support my work, considering becoming a paid supporter. If you have any ideas or leads on what I should cover next, contact me.
ACON tried to hide its militia ties
In a September 2022 video message to his deputies, after talking about about the raffle for 1000 rounds of ammo (which I go into detail about below), Scot explained that he wanted to use ACON to recruit "in a different network of people" so they could "spread the message, to help grow as a movement."
But, "more than anything else," he wanted money for militia activities:
In order to fight back, we need the money. We need money to train. We need money to prepare. We need money to get our people ready, to put politicians in office. To advertise. To grow. That's what we need.
Here's the full video he posted:
You can find this in the dataset at AP III State Leaders Chat/ChatExport_2023-03-28/video_files/video_441@28-09-2022_07-26-08.mp4. You can read the surrounding chat messages in AP III State Leaders Chat/ChatExport_2023-03-28/messages4.html.
This isn't what it said on the ACON website.
According to an archive of its website, ACON billed itself as a community group that does first aid training, natural disaster preparedness and response, and community outreach, serving veterans, "individuals experiencing homelessness," and "disadvantaged youth."
It didn't mention that it's associated with American Patriots Three Percent, much less that it was a vehicle for AP III to accept donations and grow the militia movement.
The ACON website is no longer live. It used be hosted at https://acon.network, though it's been down since at least the mid-2023. However, you can view old versions of it using the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. Go check it out!
acon.network domain name expired in March 2024, and as of this writing it's currently available for anyone to register it and take it over, lol. Let me know if you do something funny with it.ACON's website lied about tax-exempt 501c3 nonprofit status
On the FAQ page of the ACON website, the answer to the question, "Are donations tax deductible?" is:
Yes. ACON is a 501c3 organization. Donations are tax deductible per the guidelines set by the IRS. Please contact your tax professional for additional information.
This isn't true. When I'm researching a 501c3 nonprofit organization, the first thing I do is try to look it up in a database like GuideStar or ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer. I can't find a nonprofit with the name "American Community Outreach Network" in either of these databases.
Joshua Kaplan confirmed this in earlier reporting in ProPublica based on data from the same infiltrator, saying, "its website falsely advertised it as a 501c3 nonprofit authorized to accept tax-deductible donations, which the IRS said is not true."
ACON is a real legal entity in Pennsylvania
While ACON was never a federal nonprofit, it is a "domestic nonprofit corporation" registered in the state of Pennsylvania.
When I started looking into ACON, I searched the Telegram chats for strings like "acon" and "acon.network" using Datasette, as I described in the previous installment. I then read through all the messages surrounding talk about ACON.
In a July 31, 2022 video message posted to the Telegram chat specifically for state leaders of the militia, Seddon said:
We're doing it legitimately, because now we're set up as a nonprofit. And soon to be federal, national. Everything right now is set up through Pennsylvania.
Here's part of the video message:
You can find the full video in the dataset at AP III State Leaders Chat/ChatExport_2023-03-28/video_files/video_410@31-07-2022_06-36-50.mp4.
ffmpeg.While I despise LLMs for many purposes, using them to come up with the proper
ffmpeg commands to run is actually quite helpful. I asked an LLM, "How do I use ffmpeg to clip an mp4 video from 0:00 to 1:38?" and it told me to run ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -ss 0 -to 00:01:38 -c copy output.mp4. It worked.With this Pennsylvania tip, I did a DuckDuckGo search for "pennsylvania corporation search" and found the Pennsylvania Business Entity Search website, run by the Pennsylvania Department of State. If you search for "American Community Outreach Network" you can find the legal entity that Scot registered.
It's a Pennsylvania "domestic nonprofit corporation" with an initial filing on February 15, 2022, and with the registered office address of 526 North Saint Cloud Street #556, Allentown, PA 18104.
Unfortunately this government website doesn't provide much information about this corporation, but it does provide a physical address in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Is this Scot's home address?
Whenever I'm investigating physical addresses, I like to look them up in Google Street View to see what I'm dealing with. You can quickly tell if you have a residential address, an office building, or something else. In this case, it looks like ACON is registered to a rented mailbox by a company called LV Mailbox.
"I want all of us making money, and this is the way we're gonna do it"
In a July 2022 voice message to his deputies, Scot explained his plan to use ACON to get rich, with a touch of misogyny for good measure. It's simple: just put your housewife to work telling her friends to donate, and you get to keep 20% of the money for yourself.
So guys listen. This is the beauty of what we're doing. We can have our wives, at home, our stay-at-home moms, just add the link. We got something, we're trying to raise money for the floods down in Tennessee or Kentucky, Missouri, whatever the case may be. We can have our wives. Anybody that gets money coming through, donating to us, is going to receive 20% off the top. So if you raise $10,000, you're gonna get two grand. And that's gonna go directly to you. That's how it's gonna work. So there's huge opportunity. If we put our heads together and we do this right, we can all be sitting very pretty.
I just want to point out here that, in other parts of the chat logs, Scot makes it clear that he's divorced. Here's the full voice message:
You can find the original audio file in the dataset at AP III State Leaders Chat/ChatExport_2023-03-28/voice_messages/audio_841@31-07-2022_10-32-15.ogg.
ffmpeg to convert it from OGG to MP3 for publishing by running this command: ffmpeg -i input.ogg -codec:a libmp3lame -qscale:a 2 output.mp3Some people, like Justin from Mississippi, were so moved by Scot's get-rich-quick scheme that they decided they wanted to start working on ACON full-time.
AP III State Leaders Chat/ChatExport_2023-03-28/messages2.html.Donate $20 for a chance to win 1000 rounds of 9mm ammo
In order to encourage AP III members to donate to ACON, they started a raffle. Every $20 you donate, you get a chance to win 1000 rounds of 9mm ammo.
Here's how John, a National Commander from Washington state, gave instructions for entering the raffle in a September 26, 2022 voice message:
Here's what we're doing. We are raffling off 1000 rounds of ammo. I believe it's 9mm. Addison, Idaho State CO and regional CO, is given graciously us 1000 rounds to auction off. So here's what you're gonna do for this fundraiser. You're gonna go to the acon.network site. ACON is our 501c3, and that is the web page. You guys are gonna go to that web page. You guys are gonna go to the right corner and hit donate.
The deadline for the raffle is October 31. Later he says:
On October 31, Tee and Rusky, or Scot, will announce the winner of the raffle, and you will get the ammo mailed to you. If there's any questions about the ammo, you can ask any one of us, or you can ask Addison, who has the physical ammo on him, and he'll be glad to let you know whatever details you need to know.
Here's John's full voice message, which you find in the dataset at AP III State Leaders Chat/ChatExport_2023-03-28/voice_messages/audio_908@26-09-2022_18-57-19.ogg:
To join the raffle, you'd need to go to the Pledge America page on the ACON website and donate to either the "2022 Hurricane Preparedness Water Drive" or "Operation Turkey Day." You need to donate at least $20.
The archived Pledge America page didn't mention what it was a raffle for (1000 rounds of ammo!) but it did include some legal language:
Raffle will be administered and conducted by ACON Partner American Patriot Vanguard. Rules and Laws of the State Of New Mexico govern this raffle.
The mention of American Patriot Vanguard, listed as an antigovernment extremist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, is the closest the ACON website comes to to admitting that this is a militia project. Unlike ACON, American Patriot Vanguard actually does operate a 501c3 nonprofit.
On November 2, 2022, they picked the winner in a video call:
The video call where they draw the raffle for 1000 rounds of ammo. You can find the original file at AP III State Leaders Chat/ChatExport_2023-03-28/video_files/video_457@02-11-2022_19-33-36.mp4.
Mark Spann won! In the announcement video, John says:
Your ammo will be shipped out UPS courtesy of Addison, a.k.a. Smokehouse, from Idaho. It will be shipped out UPS with tracking.
Looks like I was right about Addison being Smokehouse, and looks like Addison works for UPS.
Faking an Employer Identification Number (EIN)
On redwhitenblue.us, a now-defunct internal communication platform that AP III was using in addition to Telegram, militia organizers also tried to get UPS employees to donate to ACON. (How many UPS employees are AP III members, other than Addison, I wonder?)
For some reason Tee posted a video instead of an image, but here's what was posted:
AP III National/ACON UPS Flyer (1).mp4.The Pennsylvania State entity number, 7480837, is the actual ID of their legal entity in Pennsylvania – scroll up and look at the screenshot above to confirm.
But as far as I can tell, the federal EIN, 86-3158539, is completely made up. I've searched for it in nonprofit databases, and it doesn't appear to be a 501c3. I've Googled for it and DuckDuckGo'ed it, and there are no results. I think it's just completely fake.
Going out with a whimper
If ACON were a real 501c3, if there were actually any real transparency around this group, I'd have more information to tell if it was successful or not. But since they don't publish 990s, I have to go on what they say in their internal messages.
On October 5, 2022 (a month before the ammo raffle finished), Scott posted a financial update on how much money they raised:
- $670 for two children in the militia community who were injured in an ATV accident
- $635 for a water drive
- $290 for Operation Turkey Day
- And "a couple miscellaneous donations"
All donations, other than for the children, were going towards ammo raffle tickets. "1000 rounds of 9mm, you can't go wrong. It's only $20, it's for a good cause guys, so please get in on it."
Scot distributed this information in a video message, but I'm not posting the video here because it names the kids who were injured. But if you're doing further research, you can find it at AP III State Leaders Chat/ChatExport_2023-03-28/video_files/video_445@05-10-2022_10-07-34.mp4.
At that point they had raised $1,595, plus maybe a little more. This is actually the only financial information I could find about ACON.
According to that same previous reporting in ProPublica by Joshua Kaplan:
Seddon’s command quickly began to unravel. A rumor started to spread: Law enforcement was investigating the ACON scheme. The charity had never taken off. One of Seddon’s ex-deputies told ProPublica it raised less than $5,000.
Looking at the Wayback Machine archives of https://acon.network, the last working archive was from May 2023. The next archive, in August 2023, saved a 403 Forbidden error.
The domain name expired March 18, 2024.