A hacker stole more than $3,000 from Sen. Cory Booker’s reelection committee, according to a federal filing reviewed by NOTUS.
The $3,092 unauthorized charge to American Express by an unknown person took place on Dec. 17, Booker’s campaign told the Federal Election Commission on Tuesday. The committee opened a new bank account to “prevent any future fraudulent activity” and disputed the transaction with its bank, but it hasn’t yet recouped the lost money, it wrote in a letter to the FEC.
“Last year our campaign became aware of a small amount of suspicious bank activity,” Booker’s communications director, David Bergstein, said in a statement to NOTUS. “We immediately reported the issue to our bank so they could follow the appropriate processes and implemented additional security protocols. No donor information was accessed and no unauthorized individual gained internal access to our account.”
The FBI had no comment.
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The lost money won’t likely hurt Booker’s political bottom line: The senator’s reelection campaign has more than $22.1 million in available cash as of March 31, according to its most recent campaign finance report.
The campaign committee of Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, is among the latest in a series of candidates and committees that have reported funds missing from their bank accounts.
For example, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island had fraudulent withdrawals of more than $7,600 taken from his leadership PAC in January. Political committees for accounting firm KPMG and the American Fintech Council, a leading financial technology trade association, also reported thefts in recent months.
Other allegations and instances of theft have come from within the PACs and campaigns.
Chelsea Diab has been accused by the Seafarers International Union of embezzling from the union’s two PACs while serving as treasurer, NOTUS reported this week.
Jonas Murphy, a former treasurer of the National Venture Capital PAC, pleaded guilty to charges related to embezzling more than $1 million, NOTUS reported in March.
Committees led by Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, both Virginia Democrats, were among several political committees that had money stolen from a former treasurer, Katherine Buchanan, Rolling Stone first reported in 2025. Buchanan pleaded guilty to embezzling more than $840,000, The Washington Post reported.
Other notable politicians and political entities to experience political thefts this decade include Senate Majority Leader John Thune, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Sen. Jerry Moran, the Republican National Committee, the anti-Donald Trump super PAC Lincoln Project and Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Diana Harshbarger.
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