Forensic review finds improprieties in Delaware gubernatorial candidate’s campaign finances

DOVER, Del. (AP) — A forensic review commissioned by the state Department of Elections has uncovered significant improprieties in the campaign finances of Delaware’s lieutenant governor, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for governor.

The elections department hired Pennsylvania-based Forensic Litigation Consultants in January amid widespread scrutiny of Bethany Hall-Long’s campaign finances. Jeffrey Lampinski, a certified fraud examiner, found among other things that Hall-Long and her husband had received payments totaling $33,000 more than what she purportedly loaned to her campaign.

Lampinski, a retired FBI senior executive, also found that Hall-Long’s husband and former campaign treasurer, Dana Long, wrote four campaign checks to himself but falsely reported that they had been written to someone else. Similarly, Long wrote a check to former campaign fundraiser Jennifer Mueller but reported that it had been issued to someone else, he said.

“Why he publicly reported these five expenditures as made to a payee other than the true payee remains unexplained,” Lampinski wrote in a report obtained Thursday by The Associated Press in response to a FOIA request.

Lampinski found that from January 2016 to December 2023, Dana Long wrote 112 checks from the campaign committee account to himself or cash, and one to his wife. The checks totaled just under $300,000 and should have been reported as campaign expenditures. Instead, Lampinski found, 109 were never reported in initial finance reports, and the other four, payable to Dana Long, were reported as being made to someone else.

The report also recounts a June 14 interview in which Lampinski asked Dana Long about a note that was written by Hall-Long and found in a folder