COVID-Denying Medical Group Implodes Over Founder's Extravagant Spending

[Celerity]

Dr. Simone Gold is one of America’s foremost purveyors of bogus COVID cures. She’s used the money on a mansion, private jet trips, and her underwear-model boyfriend.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/covid-misinformation-group-americas-frontline-doctors-implodes-over-dr-simone-golds-extravagant-spending



When employees at leading COVID pseudoscience group America’s Frontline Doctors tried to log in to work last week, they found themselves locked out of their email accounts. The nonprofit quickly fell into factions, with employees holding rival Zoom meetings to plot who would take over the group. The organization’s exiled founder, Dr. Simone Gold, tried unsuccessfully to gain access to a private Zoom call, only to find herself stuck in a waiting room. In internal emails, the group’s accountant worried about who could still access the $7 million locked in its bank accounts.

The war for the right’s most prominent COVID quack group—and the millions of dollars it has raised through relentless fundraising and prescriptions for bogus coronavirus cures—had begun. For months, AFLDS has been split between its board and Gold, the group’s charismatic founder and convicted Capitol rioter, over an internal audit into Gold’s personal spending. That dispute spilled into the open on Nov. 5, when the board sued Gold to try and force her to stop representing the organization, in a lawsuit first reported by Vice News. Now the lawsuit’s outcome could determine the fate of the group driving much of the medical disinformation on the pro-Trump right.

AFLDS is tearing itself apart in a fight over what Gold’s rivals describe as her extravagant spending using the group’s funds. The alleged purchases include $100,000 on a single private jet trip and $50,000 a month in Gold’s personal expenses. Much of the controversy has centered on AFLDS’s purchase of a $3.6 million mansion in Naples, Florida., where Gold lives with her boyfriend: a much younger underwear model and fellow Capitol rioter. Gold isn’t backing down, penning threatening emails to board members and describing herself, alternately, as a “popular folk hero,” a “rainmaker,” and an avenging “lioness.”

“It’s really a mess, and I’m really sorry that it’s come to this,” said Richard Mack, an AFLDS board member and far-right former Arizona sheriff. As AFLDS’s leadership squabbles, the group’s rank-and-file employees are struggling to fulfill the organization’s basic functions, like connecting their supporters with prescriptions for ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. In the end, AFLDS staffers are able to do just one thing, according to a signed affidavit filed in court recently: cancel their fans’ donations. “None of us really know what’s going on, and pretty much we’ve all lost the ability to do our jobs,” said Amanda Kaiser-Johnston, an AFLDS employee who was locked out of her email account amid the feud and has been accused by her coworkers of being a “spy” for one faction.

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[Thomas Hurt]

1. Nooooo, who could have seen that coming.......LOL.

I mean honestly, there comes a time when you just have let them be scammed. They won't learn any other way, if at all.

[inthewind21]

2. lol

Typical republican MO, it's all about the grift!