A government-funded community peacekeeping organization championed by Minnesota Democrats as an alternative to traditional policing is accused of diverting over $6.5 million in charitable assets toward luxury cars, trips to Las Vegas, and child support payments as part of a self-dealing scheme.
We Push for Peace, a Minneapolis-based nonprofit corporation formed ostensibly to combat crime in a “compassionate” manner, faces civil fraud charges for allegedly violating Minnesota charity law and purposely running the 501(c)(3) group into the ground “to steal its business for personal gain.”
State oversight officials filed the lawsuit on Friday against We Push for Peace, its former director, Trahern Pollard, and its ex-treasurer, Jaclyn McGuigan, alleging that they lied to the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office and the state’s chief regulator of charities over the course of its fraud investigation about the money funneling operation.
According to the 37-page complaint, more than $6 million of the stolen funds personally benefited Pollard, the founder, president, and chief executive officer of We Push for Peace.
We Push for Peace’s website touts that Pollard, a self-proclaimed “expert in the field of crime reduction,” was often called upon by Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), the mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul, and other Democratic leaders, all the way up to the Biden White House and its Community Violence taskforce, “for his knowledge, voice, presence, and solutions surrounding crime, intervention, prevention and creating safe communities.”
Originally founded in 2016, We Push for Peace started receiving government grant funding following the 2020 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody.
Amid the “defund the police” movement, We Push for Peace was awarded government grants from Hennepin County and Minneapolis to provide “violence interruption” services for juvenile offenders and “Boots on the Ground” community policing, a violence prevention program that deputized civilians to patrol high-crime areas instead of city police officers.
The “community liaison services,” through which We Push for Peace made millions of dollars each year, involved “community engagers” hired to interact with certain individuals under “community outreach contracts.” Such interactions were intended to “disrupt” criminal conduct through mental health counseling rather than to report suspected criminals to police.
Per prosecutors, Pollard classified the community engagers as contractors, not employees, to circumvent required background checks on We Push for Peace’s workers, many of whom had criminal records themselves.
Community engagers were paid in a variety of informal ways, including by mobile transfers on payment processors such as Zelle. Separately, the U.S. Department of Labor initiated an investigation into We Push for Peace for hourly wage violations.
Authorities say Pollard spent his cut of the charity’s money on luxury vehicles, Las Vegas vacations, child support payments, and financing his liquor store, TXT Wine & Spirits, and pre-owned car dealership called Pollard’s Auto Sales.
More recently, Pollard allegedly formed another for-profit business, “Change Makers,” and deposited checks made out to We Push for Peace into separate Change Makers accounts. Charging documents say that Pollard siphoned off so much revenue from We Push for Peace that the misappropriations bankrupted the crime-fighting organization.
In fact, when the Minneapolis city government reached out to We Push for Peace for help with “community support” during Operation Metro Surge, a federal deportation campaign in the Twin Cities metropolitan area that sparked violent riots, officials say the formerly multimillion-dollar organization “lacked any capacity to serve its basic function to assist the community.”
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“During Operation Metro Surge, when we needed nonprofits providing social services and community support the most, We Push for Peace was utterly incapable of assisting Minnesotans,” said Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison in a press release announcing the fraud case. “When my office asked questions, Pollard and McGuigan lied about key facts, continued to misuse assets, and ultimately caused the demise of the nonprofit.”
Pollard, who has a prior criminal conviction for theft by swindling, allegedly provided numerous false statements to investigators, insisting that the child support payments were actually for the nonprofit’s overhead costs and that tens of thousands of dollars sent to his friends covered payroll in Chicago.
Shortly after We Push for Peace was first flagged for suspicious activity, Pollard founded “We Push for Peace-For Profit Professional Service Corporation.” A little over a week later, Pollard allegedly told Ellison’s office that We Push for Peace had a for-profit arm and that “private contracts and/or non-government funds are handled through this entity,” despite the fact that the for-profit offshoot was only 10 days old.
Among other allegations against We Push for Peace, the lawsuit says it lacked a board of directors, failed to have basic policies and procedures in place, and did not maintain accurate or complete financial records. McGuigan, the organization’s treasurer, allegedly described her accounting practices as “back of the napkin” record-keeping.
Ellison’s office said it attempted to work with We Push for Peace’s newly elected leadership to ensure the nonprofit organization’s continuation, but the financial damage was too extensive. We Push for Peace is now no longer operational.
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We Push for Peace reported that, as of April, its offices are “essentially sitting vacant” and there is “simply no funding to support the services the organization was providing or to pay any employees or contractors.”
As for collecting contributions, We Push for Peace still solicits donations on Venmo and CashApp.