A thief stole, then altered, multiple political contribution checks sent through the mail by the political action committee of a major Washington-based law firm, according to a new letter to federal regulators NOTUS reviewed.
The unidentified thief stole two of the checks from a batch of political donation payments the Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP’s PAC mailed in D.C.’s upscale Cleveland Park neighborhood on Nov. 24, 2025.
Arnold & Porter subsequently increased its security protocols, enrolling in Truist bank’s fraud inspector program, which generates an email to the committee “every time a payment is debited from its bank account,” allowing the PAC to dispute any unauthorized payments.
Arnold & Porter’s Wednesday letter to the Federal Election Commission provides these and other new details about the theft, which NOTUS first revealed in June. And it arrives amid a rash of thefts involving federal political committees, including revelations this week involving the cash-strapped Democratic National Committee and the Senate campaign of Michigan Republican Mike Rogers.
Trending
The law firm’s PAC described the unknown party that carried out the theft as a “criminal actor” who intercepted and washed the checks — changing the payee and dollar amount.
Arnold & Porter’s treasurer, Nicholas L. Townsend, told the FEC that the thief altered one check intended for the campaign committee of Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-New York). After stealing the check, the thief changed the written value — $1,000 — to $40,000 and made it out to “Gleora Agoj” with “Advisory Asistant fee” written on the memo line.
The name on the check does not appear to be affiliated with Arnold & Porter. The Meeks campaign never received the funds, according to the memo.
Sign up for the NOTUS Metro newsletter for essential coverage of the D.C. region.
Another check addressed to the American Mosaic PAC, a committee focused on increasing diversity in Congress, was altered from $2,500 to $20,953.
The Arnold & Porter PAC discovered “that at least one check, and possibly more, had not been received by the intended recipients” and put “stop-payment requests” on the disbursements to Meeks’ campaign and the American Mosaic PAC.
The law firm, which is headquartered in D.C., called Truist on May 1 after it noticed multiple unauthorized payments and the “two suspicious check deposits pending” while compiling its monthly financial report to the FEC.
The bank assured Arnold & Porter that the committee’s account would not be charged, but the $40,000 was still taken from the PAC’s funds. The $20,000 check was never honored by the bank because of the stop-payment order, Townsend told the FEC.
The Arnold & Porter committee ultimately recouped the $40,000 in stolen funds from the fraudulent check and an additional $2,700 unauthorized payments through the bank.
Following the theft, the committee told the FEC it had taken several steps, including enrollment in its bank’s fraud detection program, to address any security or information gaps in its payment processes.
“The Committee also submitted an incident report to the U.S. Postal Service stating that someone was stealing mail in the neighborhood,” Townsend wrote.
Arnold & Porter did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the memo.
Check fraud is generally on the rise across the nation, with suspicious activity reports, or documents filed by financial institutions to report suspected violations of the law, nearly doubling from 2021 to 2023, according to the FBI.
Author
