NEW YORK — For­mer White House advis­er Steve Ban­non was arrest­ed Thurs­day on charges that he and three oth­ers ripped off donors to an online fundrais­ing scheme “We Build The Wall.”

The fundrais­er was head­ed by men who pushed their close ties to Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, giv­ing their effort a legit­i­ma­cy that helped them raise more than $25 mil­lion. They tout­ed their effort to help the pres­i­dent real­ize his vision of a “big beau­ti­ful” bor­der wall along the U.S.-Mexico line, espe­cial­ly after his effort to redi­rect mil­lions in gov­ern­ment funds, was held up through lawsuits.

But accord­ing to the crim­i­nal charges unsealed Thurs­day, very lit­tle of the wall was actu­al­ly con­struct­ed. Instead, the mon­ey lined the pock­ets of some of those involved. Ban­non received over $1 mil­lion him­self, using some to secret­ly pay co-defen­dant, Bri­an Kolfage, the founder of the project, and to cov­er hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars of Bannon’s per­son­al expenses.

Accord­ing to the indict­ment, Ban­non promised that 100% of the donat­ed mon­ey would be used for the project, but the defen­dants col­lec­tive­ly used hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars in a man­ner incon­sis­tent with the organization’s pub­lic representations.

They faked invoic­es and sham “ven­dor” arrange­ments, among oth­er ways, to hide what was real­ly hap­pen­ing, accord­ing to the indict­ment. “All mon­ey donat­ed to the ‘We Build the Wall’ cam­paign goes direct­ly to wall!!! Not anyone’s pock­et,” the law­suit said.

Ban­non is among a stun­ning list of for­mer Trump asso­ciates who have found them­selves under indict­ment or in jail, includ­ing his for­mer cam­paign chair, Paul Man­afort, his long­time lawyer, Michael Cohen, and his for­mer nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er, Michael Flynn.

An immi­gra­tion plan unveiled by Trump last year had includ­ed a pro­pos­al to allow pub­lic dona­tions to pay for his long-promised south­ern bor­der wall. At that point, the GoFundMe cam­paign launched by war vet­er­an Bri­an Kolfage had raised more than $20 mil­lion for wall construction.

But Trump lat­er denounced the project pub­licly, tweet­ing last month that “I dis­agreed with doing this very small (tiny) sec­tion of wall, in a tricky area, by a pri­vate group which raised mon­ey by ads. It was only done to make me look bad, and per­haps it now doesn’t even work. Should have been built like rest of Wall, 500 plus miles,” he said.

The defen­dants learned last Octo­ber from a finan­cial insti­tu­tion that the “We Build the Wall” cam­paign might be under fed­er­al crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion and took addi­tion­al steps to con­ceal the fraud, accord­ing to the indictment.

Charges includ­ed con­spir­a­cy to com­mit wire fraud and con­spir­a­cy to com­mit mon­ey laundering.

Kolfage did not return a call seek­ing com­ment, but accord­ing to the indict­ment, he once said: “It’s not pos­si­ble to steal the mon­ey. I can’t touch that mon­ey. It’s not for me.”

A phone at the office of Bannon’s lawyer went unan­swered Thurs­day morn­ing. A spokes­woman for Ban­non did not imme­di­ate­ly respond to a request for com­ment. It was not imme­di­ate­ly clear who would rep­re­sent Kolfage at an ini­tial court appear­ance, and his phone was unanswered.

The indict­ment said Kolfage “went so far as to send mass emails to his donors ask­ing them to pur­chase cof­fee from his unre­lat­ed busi­ness, telling donors that the cof­fee com­pa­ny was the only way he ‘keeps his fam­i­ly fed and a roof over their head.’”

Some donors wrote direct­ly to Kolfage say­ing they did not have a lot of mon­ey and were skep­ti­cal of online fundrais­ing cam­paigns, the indict­ment said. It added that Kolfage would reas­sure the donors that nobody was being compensated.

In fact, the indict­ment said, an arrange­ment had been made among the Ban­non and his code­fen­dants to pay Kolfage $100,000 up front and an addi­tion­al $20,000 monthly.

Kolfage even­tu­al­ly spent some of the over $350,000 he received on home ren­o­va­tions, pay­ments toward a boat, a lux­u­ry SUV, a golf cart, jew­el­ry, cos­met­ic surgery, per­son­al tax pay­ments and cred­it card debt.

We Build the Wall, launched on Dec. 17, 2018, orig­i­nal­ly pro­mot­ed a project for 3 miles of fence posts in South Texas that was ulti­mate­ly built and large­ly fund­ed by Fish­er Indus­tries, which has received about $2 bil­lion in fund­ing for wall con­tracts. Tom­my Fish­er, CEO, didn’t respond to calls for comment.

In 2019, Kolfage and Fish­er suc­cess­ful­ly con­struct­ed a half-mile of bol­lard-style bor­der fence on pri­vate­ly donat­ed land in New Mex­i­co near of El Paso, Texas. We Build The Wall used ear­ly con­struc­tion to fundraise for more cash and more pri­vate land dona­tions in along bor­der states.

Con­struc­tion faced resis­tance by local author­i­ties in New Mex­i­co and Texas and accu­sa­tions of improp­er per­mit­ting. In May, fed­er­al offi­cials found that a sec­tion of Fisher’s pri­vate­ly-fund­ed wall vio­lat­ed flood con­struc­tion stan­dards along the Rio Grande. It also caused erosion.

Dustin Stock­ton, who helped start the cam­paign then left the project to work on the upcom­ing pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, said it seemed clear that fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors were “attack­ing polit­i­cal infra­struc­ture that sup­ports Pres­i­dent Trump right before the election.”

He could not com­ment on the spe­cif­ic charges yet. He was not charged in the case.

Ban­non led the con­ser­v­a­tive Bre­it­bart News before being tapped to serve as chief exec­u­tive offi­cer of Trump’s cam­paign in its crit­i­cal final months, when he pushed a scorched earth strat­e­gy that includ­ed high­light­ing the sto­ries of for­mer Pres­i­dent Bill Clinton’s accusers. After the elec­tion, he served as chief strate­gist dur­ing the tur­bu­lent ear­ly months of Trump’s administration.

The blunt-spo­ken, com­bat­ive Ban­non was the voice of a nation­al­is­tic, out­sider con­ser­vatism, and he pushed Trump to fol­low through on some of his most con­tentious cam­paign promis­es, includ­ing his trav­el ban on sev­er­al major­i­ty-Mus­lim coun­tries. But Ban­non also clashed with oth­er top advis­ers, and his high pro­file some­times irked Trump. He was pushed out in August 2017.

Ban­non, who served in the Navy and worked as an invest­ment banker at Gold­man Sachs before becom­ing a Hol­ly­wood pro­duc­er, has been host­ing a pro-Trump pod­cast called “War Room” that began dur­ing the president’s impeach­ment pro­ceed­ings and has con­tin­ued dur­ing the pandemic.

Kobach, a con­ser­v­a­tive fire­brand and the for­mer Kansas sec­re­tary of state, lost his race for Sen­ate in Kansas ear­li­er this month. Kobach is known nation­al­ly for advo­cat­ing restric­tive immi­gra­tion poli­cies and his name was tossed around for a pos­si­ble posi­tion in Home­land Secu­ri­ty that nev­er came to fruition.

Kolfage was inter­viewed a day before the indict­ment was unsealed by Ban­non on Bannon’s “War Room” pod­cast. He dis­cussed a dis­pute with the fundrais­ing plat­form and encour­aged future donors to go straight to their website.

Ban­non asked him whether he thought the wall could get built in order for Trump to ful­fill his cam­paign promise.

“I think we stand in a pret­ty good spot, as long as he gets elect­ed,” Kolfage said.