A Toledo man was found guilty of wire fraud and three counts of money laundering by a jury after a six-day trial this week for stealing donated money to his Black Lives Matter (BLM) organization and using it for personal gain, according to the Northern District of Ohio U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Court documents and testimony cited by the U.S. Attorney’s Office report that Sir Maejor Page, 35, created a 501(c)(3) Facebook page called Black Lives Matter of Greater Atlanta (BLMGA) and later used it to defraud donors out of more than $450,000 after BLMGA’s tax-exempt status as a charity with the IRS was revoked.
Page (pictured above) created the Facebook page in 2016 and registered it as a domestic non-profit with the Georgia Secretary of State Corporations Division.
Facebook recognized BLMGA as a valid non-profit organization and allowed users to make donations directly to BLMGA via the social media site.
In 2017, the IRS approved Page’s request granting BLMGA tax-exempt status under Section 503(c)(3) of the tax code, but dissolved the page’s tax-exempt status in 2019.
Despite this, Page continued to accept donations after “falsely portraying BLMGA to the public as a legitimate charity engaged in social justice work, when in fact, it was not,” according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Page, for example, falsely represented that the donations would be used to “fight for George Floyd” and the “movement.”
“Instead, Page used the money that individual donors gave to BLMGA not for social justice causes, but rather to buy items for his own personal use, such as a house and furniture. Page also committed money-laundering crimes when he bought these items with the donations that he fraudulently obtained,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
BLMGA currently boasts 62,000 Facebook followers despite not being active since September of 2020.
“Preying on the generosity of the public for personal gain is cold and calculated,” FBI Cleveland Special Agent in Charge Greg Nelsen said in a statement. “The FBI and its white-collar crime division along with our federal, state, and local partners will continue to aggressively find and investigate criminals who believe they can deceive others through shady business practices.”
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Ohio Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
