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arizona1

12/20/18 8:38 PM

#296172 RE: DesertDrifter #296170

Founder of viral fundraiser for Trump's border wall has questionable news past

The Florida man behind the GoFundMe page, a triple-amputee Iraq War veteran named Brian Kolfage, spent a large portion of the fundraising campaign’s description outlining his past, including a bolded section titled “How do you know this is not a scam?”

He implored users to look up his history, pointing donors to his verified Facebook page, and saying “I'm credible and a real person.”
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The fundraising page doesn’t mention Kolfage’s most recent business venture, a Facebook page titled Right Wing News and a ring of affiliate sites that frequently trafficked in conspiracy theories. In October, Right Wing News was pulled down by Facebook in a sweep of more than 559 pages that the company said were “using fake accounts… to drive traffic to their websites” or “were ad farms using Facebook to mislead people into thinking that they were forums for legitimate political debate.”
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Kolfage also ran Right Wing News’ shuttered affiliate sites including VeteranAF and FreedomDaily, which pushed false conspiracy theories, like ones claiming Hillary Clinton was secretly hiding deadly illnesses and fake voter fraud stories days before the 2016 election.


Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/founder-viral-fundraiser-trump-s-border-wall-has-fake-news-n950636