Tommy Marcus, an Instagram celebrity known as “Quentin Quarantino,” requested his 690,000 followers on Aug. 17 to help finance evacuation planes for Afghan people escaping Taliban control.
The contributions came in. A $550,000 goal, which Marcus said would pay for two planes and the rescue of at least 300 people, was met in only 80 minutes. In less than two weeks, the amount had surpassed $7.2 million, which surprised Marcus and the charity leaders with whom he had collaborated on the initiative, dubbed “Operation Flyaway.”
“We want to be clear: EVERY SINGLE NICKEL of everything raised will go to either pay for flights, or support these humans through various non-profits,” Marcus wrote on the Flyaway GoFundMe page, “will be running flights until they tell us we can’t anymore.”
Despite this, no Afghans have been evacuated aboard Flyaway aircraft, according to a thorough investigation. The investigation discovered that Flyaway spent $3.3 million on canceled flights for which it did not collect reimbursements. Attempts are being made by organizers to reschedule such flights.
In certain instances, Flyaway has aided in the payment of flights arranged by other organizations or loaned money to make flights feasible. Flyaway claims to have assisted Afghans in getting to airports in other countries. Though Marcus, 26, claims that Flyaway assisted with the evacuation of hundreds of individuals, organizers stated that the majority of them flew on planes paid for the US taxpayers or other groups.
Because many of these initiatives are not organized as charities, organizations like Flyaway are not obliged to disclose tax documents outlining their operations. They are also not obliged to follow nonprofit standards, which means that their actions, although frequently well-intentioned, get minimal scrutiny. Donors are often unable to know how their funds were used.
The American Institute of Philanthropy’s executive director, Laurie Styron, characterized crowdfunding efforts as the “Wild West of charity fundraising,” and advised influencers to instead encourage their followers to choose organizations with experience and competence. “Good intentions mixed with hubris is a dangerous combination,” remarked Styron.
The investigation also sheds light on what was at times a disorganized attempt by citizens and charity groups with different degrees of competence to assist vulnerable Afghans as their country succumbed to the Taliban.
The United States administration was caught off guard and unprepared. Nongovernmental organizations fought to relieve an immensely complicated humanitarian catastrophe and preserve lives by mobilizing resources under severe conditions.
Even experienced relief organizations had difficulty getting people out. However, Flyaway is an example of how a group with no expertise in such operations rapidly collected large sums of money and then failed to make the most use of it.
Marcus said in August that if the people were not evacuated quickly, “neither they nor their family will make it through the month.” Marcus said that if enough funds were collected, the organization would operate several trips from Kabul, and that “every $1,500 raised represents a seat on one of the planes.”
According to statistics given by them, Flyaway claims to have spent more than $5.2 million on flights and ground operations and has rescued or assisted in the rescue of 435 Afghans. The majority of it, $2.8 million, was given to a charter firm headed by a New Zealand businessman who, according to court documents, is now under investigation by US authorities for fraud in issues unconnected to Afghanistan.
Flyaway promised early on that any surplus funds would be donated to the Washington-based International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF), which has earned $1.2 million as a consequence.
Marcus publicly referred to Flyaway’s efforts as a “miracle” on August 25. However, two days later, during a heated conference call with Flyaway’s commanders and associated advocacy organizations, Marcus said that he was “losing faith” in the operation as it battled to transport people and aircraft to Kabul’s airport. Marcus said that he had inadvertently “shared fake news” by sharing a picture of an Afghan girls robotics team that had been rescued by others based on incorrect information he had received.
“All I’m seeing is failures,” Marcus said in a recording of the call that the original investigators obtained, later adding, “All I have gotten is lies.”
On the conversation, one participant cried, others talked over one other, and California-based activist Azadeh Ghafari repeatedly screamed at Flyaway organizers, “Stop spending money!” Marcus and other Flyaway officials’ attorneys subsequently issued Ghafari a cease-and-desist letter requesting that she stop accusing them of misusing money.
Marcus said in a 25-minute interview that Flyaway’s attempts to evacuate people are continuing, adding, “I just know that we are working with companies to either get planes off or refunds.”
Marcus claims the results so far have justified the effort. “People are alive because of Operation Flyaway,” he stated. “So regardless of the chaos that has surrounded it, there’s no regrets.”
Flyaway has released a highly edited list of 300 individuals it claims to have assisted in getting on flights sponsored by others. It supplied contact information for three Flyaway evacuees, who verified they were Afghans fleeing the country with the assistance of Flyway.
One former US military translator, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he worried for his family’s safety, claimed Flyaway “worked hard and did the best job to save me and my family.”
The concept for Operation Flyaway came from a phone conversation on Aug. 14 between Sheffield Ford, a retired Army major who received a Silver Star for his service in Afghanistan, and Karen Kraft, a former Army Reserve officer and television producer, according to Ford and Kraft. Ford is the CEO of Raven Advisory, a security firm in Fayetteville, N.C., and Kraft is the chair of Veterans in Media and Entertainment (VME), a networking organization headquartered in Los Angeles.
With the Taliban closing in on the capital and the US troops preparing to leave the country on August 31, the two were eager to assist Afghan civilians, according to Ford. Fearing that conventional fundraising would be too sluggish, he added, they reached out to Marcus, who had said that he wanted to help with rescue operations in Afghanistan.
Marcus attended the University of Michigan on a scholarship based on his academic record and his employment as a golf caddy at a country club in his birthplace of Tenafly, New Jersey. Marcus and a buddy founded a start-up business to deliver groceries to students on campus while in college. He dropped out in 2017, one class shy of graduating, he claimed. Marcus went on to amass an internet following by sharing memes and jokes about the epidemic. He sometimes utilized that forum to collect funds for liberal causes.
Marcus told investigators that Flyaway’s evacuation strategy was already “completely in place” when he joined. According to him, Ford and Kraft were the company’s operational leaders. Ford and Kraft both said that their organizations provide their time and resources for free and are not compensated for their services.
Raven is a company that provides training and security services to businesses and law enforcement. It was established in 2013 by a former CIA officer. According to Ford, the company employs 51 workers. VME was founded in 2012 and is managed by a “all-volunteer force.” From 2014 through 2019, it claimed an average yearly revenue of $144,000, according to California state statistics.
Marcus announced Flyaway in an online article on August 17, a day after frantic Afghans were videotaped clinging to a US military aircraft as it flew away from Kabul. Marcus claimed the mission was to save individuals the Taliban may consider as “high-value targets,” such as human rights attorneys, LGBTQ activists, and Afghan translators who had aided the 20-year-long American military effort.
During a conference call with partners last month, a Raven employee said that Flyaway’s “ground facilitation team” comprised of three “operators” who were Afghanistan specialists and two skilled linguists. According to a budget sheet, Flyaway has paid $440,000 for ground assistance from businesses including security contractors in Texas and Virginia.
In the early days, Flyaway organizers sent talking points to foreign authorities who they thought would welcome evacuees. According to the paper, Flyaway had received permission from the US government and was prepared to evacuate up to 2,000 Afghans to the UAE in cooperation with UAE officials. When asked whether this was correct, a State Department spokesman said, “We are not going to detail our involvement with any specific groups at this time.”
According to the paper, Flyaway had previously leased two McDonnell Douglas DC-9 aircraft from Eastern Europe and had personnel ready to go.
GoFundMe suggested that Flyaway collaborate with an existing charity, and Flyaway chose IWMF. They enlisted the help of seasoned campaigners such as Ghafari, co-director of the Afghan Women’s Mission, and Jasmin Kozowy-Mouflard, co-founder of the Los Angeles consulting company Hospitality for Humanity. Their recommended evacuees, as well as names sent to an address Marcus put online, were collected in a Flyaway master list, which Ford claimed ultimately grew to include more than 5,000 individuals.
Then, according to four individuals in touch with Flyaway regarding possible evacuations, things appeared to slow down. To avoid compromising current attempts to evacuate people, the four and others contacted for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity. Flyaway officials did not reply to certain communications from charity partners and members of the public for many days, they claimed.
“There was not consistent communication,” Kozowy-Mouflard said in an interview.
Ford stated the volume of emails to Flyaway during that time was “nearly impossible to manage.”
According to a worker who handled public queries for Flyaway, the business was overburdened. “I felt overwhelmed,” the person said. “There were thousands of requests and no way to respond to all of them. I did as many as possible, but it wasn’t enough.”
According to Ford, the two aircraft Flyaway claimed were on standby in Europe were not insured to fly into Afghanistan. The deal fell through before they could even take flight. Those to privately charter aircraft headed by more experienced organizations and businesses met with similar or comparable failures.
According to the budget sheet, interviews, and phone recordings, Flyaway could not immediately access the money it had collected because GoFundMe had not yet delivered them.
A GoFundMe representative, Leigh Lehman, refused to disclose when money was given to Flyaway, but said the for-profit business vetted all fundraisers connected to Afghanistan to safeguard contributors and organizers. “Our top priority was to provide aid to those in need, safely and quickly,” Lehman said.
A source acquainted with the arrangement claimed that about this time, Sayara International, a company with extensive expertise in the area, acquired an aircraft and arranged a departure from the Kabul airport. Sayara, on the other hand, urgently need $545,000 to combine with a half-million dollars it had discovered elsewhere, according to the source. Sayara had heard about Flyaway’s fundraising success and contacted them.
The two organizations struck an agreement: Flyaway would assist pay for the trip, and Sayara, which had a convoy of its own evacuees turned away before arriving at the airport, would provide seats on the aircraft to 200 individuals. According to the source, Flyaway claimed to have passengers waiting for them inside the airport.
With the GoFundMe money unavailable and Sayara pleading with Flyaway for a wire transfer, former Facebook CEO Brandee Barker stepped in after learning about Flyaway’s endeavor. According to three individuals involved in the scheme, she lent $545,000 to Flyaway. Flyaway eventually compensated her. Barker confirmed the agreement, calling Flyaway’s founders “real heroes.”
According to a source acquainted with the agreement, Flyaway’s evacuees did not show up, much to Sayara’s dismay. “The 200 people were not at the airport,” stated that guy.
According to media reports and a source acquainted with the flight specifics, the aircraft took off on August 24 with just 51 refugees onboard. Hundreds of passengers waited outside Kabul’s airport, where almost 300 seats remained vacant. According to individuals involved, some of them outside were those on Flyaway’s list who had been instructed to be at the airport early and were unable to get through.
So far, the $545,000 Flyaway has given Sayara is the only money it has spent directly on charter aircraft that have evacuated Afghans. It has loaned Sayara $900,000 for two more flights, one of which has already departed from Afghanistan.
According to a Flyaway spokesperson, the operation had additional people in a separate area of the airport who were unable to get to the aircraft before it took off.
Ford admitted that Flyaway “had failures of getting people through the gates” in many cases. “We focused on windows of opportunity to save human lives,” he said.
The strain was immense in the days running up to the planned US pullout on August 31. Marcus informed others involved in the scheme that hundreds of individuals had contacted him online, wanting to know how contributions were being spent.
Marcus responded to those criticisms on the evening of August 25 by announcing publicly that numerous aircraft had been chartered. According to invoices, the GoFundMe funds had been released, and Raven had signed contracts for flights from Kabul to Tirana, Albania.
Flyaway paid $1 million to Global Supply and Logistics of Columbia, South Carolina, for two planes — one with 170 seats and the other with 162 — to arrive in Kabul during the next four days. The aircraft never arrived in Kabul. When reached via phone, Global Supply CEO Robert G. Suber said that he was not authorized to discuss the deal. The $1 million was subsequently returned by Global Supply, according to Flyaway.
Ford stated that Flyaway’s attempts to organize flights were hampered by difficulties in obtaining permits from US officials and destination nations ready to accept Afghan migrants. “The biggest struggle through the whole process was the destinations,” he added, echoing the experience of many other organizations attempting to evacuate Afghans.
Ford said that the charter operators were not obliged to reimburse money spent on canceled flights, but that Flyaway may be granted credit for future trips. “We’re in discussions with NGOs on how we could still use those planes to help Afghans,” he added.
Among the contracts was a $513,000 agreement with Dubai-based Mayfair Jets for a trip. That flight, too, was canceled. Mayfair’s owner, Ahmed Mahmoud, said in an interview that $170,000 was spent on insurance and cannot be returned, but he hopes to reach an arrangement with Flyaway if the contract is not completed.
According to the invoices, Flyaway transferred $2.84 million to Kiwijet of Beverly Hills for four flights of a 280-seat Boeing 767. The website and incorporation papers of Kiwijet do not reveal who owns or controls the business. However, according to a search warrant application filed in federal court in Los Angeles in July 2020, Nicolas Steele, a New Zealand businessman, established bank accounts in Kiwijet’s name and sent emails representing himself as the company’s founder, president, and CEO.
Steele’s attorney, Eric Bensamochan, said Kiwijet is “waiting for approvals from Operation Flyaway, but aircraft and pilots are at the ready to depart and Kiwijet expects a departure very soon.”
Steele, who previously ran a company called Steele Aviation, was under investigation by federal prosecutors in Los Angeles and the U.S. Transportation Department’s Office of Inspector General on suspicion of wire fraud, identification fraud, and other offenses, according to the search warrant application. In a 27-page affidavit, a special agent from that agency said that Steele cheated other aviation businesses out of more than $154,000 by canceling a trip after receiving payment and establishing a fake wire transfer record. According to the application, he also reportedly established a bank account with a fake Social Security number and flew unlicensed.
According to court papers, investigators searched Steele’s house and confiscated electronics, including 22 smartphones. In April, a court gave investigators additional time to investigate Steele’s gadgets, which is the most recent public update in the case. The inspector general’s office refused to comment on a “ongoing investigation issue,” according to a spokesperson.
Steele and his wife, Lilia Stepanova Steele, a Soviet-born contortionist who has performed on “America’s Got Talent,” were ordered in March 2018 by a state court in Los Angeles to pay $7.2 million to a former business partner who had sued them. Steele and his wife were found guilty on numerous counts by the court, who found that Steele fraudulently persuaded the partner to invest by falsely promising him a portion in future profits. Six months later, Steele and his wife filed bankruptcy.
Kiwijet and Nicolas Steele are presently being sued by two customers and a lender who claim they owe them a total of $318,000 dollars. Steele and Kiwijet have not replied to the claims, which were filed in California and Florida, respectively. Steele’s pilot certification was revoked twice by the FAA between 2017 and 2019, and Steele Aviation was fined $1.3 million for allegedly conducting dozens of illegal flights.
Steele said in an August 2013 deposition that he was formerly known as Milton Cross but changed his name. In the deposition, he also said that he had used the name Nicholas Freeman. Steele was sentenced to eight months in jail in 1999 after being convicted of stealing a vehicle from Hertz. According to court documents, Steele was found speeding in the vehicle approximately six weeks after renting it with a fake credit card number. He also pled guilty to stealing $400 in shop merchandise while on probation for the vehicle theft.
Bensamochan stated in a statement attributed to Kiwijet, “We have no comment regarding any ongoing litigation and will address the allegations at the appropriate time.”
Ford stated that he was unconcerned about Kiwijet or Steele’s history. Ford said that Kiwijet was suggested by a reliable contractor, whom Ford did not name.
After a suicide attack in Kabul killed dozens of people, including 13 US soldiers, Flyaway leaders and affiliated NGOs convened an hour-long conference call in which simmering tensions erupted. Ford claimed that Afghans were arriving at the airport gates too early and mentioning his name to authorities. Rebecca Murga, VME’s communications director and a former Army captain who fought in Afghanistan, instructed the charities not to “flood” the airport gates with evacuees and to slow down “before we start putting people in danger.”
Ghafari retorted furiously that the activists had simply sent refugees to the gates because Flyaway instructed them to. According to IWMF’s Lees Muoz, Raven failed to explain its strategy and processes for transporting Afghans to the airport, which he described as a “big pain point for everybody.”
Barker, the former Facebook executive who loaned the company money, predicted that Flyaway would face more scrutiny. “As less and less is happening on the ground, eyes are going to come right back to this organization and people are going to be asking in detail what happened to the $7 million,” Barker said on the call.
The following day, when Marcus made his statement about having disseminated false news, the discussions heated up in a 75-minute conference call. Marcus said that he uploaded the robotics team picture on Instagram after Sayara handed it to him and other Flyaway leaders urged him to do so. He said that he erroneously believed the crew had been rescued due to Flyaway’s efforts, and that he quickly deleted the message after discovering his mistake.
Separate allegations of culpability for the robotics team’s departure had previously been called into question. An attorney representing the team had just issued a cease-and-desist letter to an Oklahoma lady, asking her not to take credit for the girls’ escape from Kabul and warning her that her frequent media appearances threatened their organization’s surviving members in Afghanistan.
On the Aug. 27 conference, Raven spokesman Jordan Blake said that the business now expects Kabul airport to become “an untenable option” over the next 24 to 36 hours, endangering the millions of dollars in flights contracted by Flyaway.
Participants shouted at each other. Ghafari demanded that leaders cease wasting money on chartering aircraft, while Marcus ordered Murga to “be quiet.” Ghafari requested copies of the flight contracts and invoices so that her lawyers could begin working on recouping the money she had already spent.
“You will have, and your lawyers, every damn scrap of piece of paper,” Kraft said. Murga, her VME colleague and fellow veteran, cried and said, “It disgusts me that since this money was raised, the civilian organizations here have been fighting over this money.”
The activists, some of whom claimed to have been silenced from speaking on the call, responded in their group Signal conversation.
“Outrageous,” Lees Muñoz said.
“It’s emotional blackmail,” said Ghafari.
Murga was informed by an IWMF security advisor who is a distinguished veteran that she does not speak for all veterans. “Take ownership for your mistake,” the advisor said, who is anonymous because of the special nature of their work.
Murga acknowledged in an email that she was enraged by the expenditure debate and irritated by the many hurdles Flyaway encountered. “This entire experience triggered my anger about the war,” Murga said. She added that Flyaway’s leaders “did the best we could under unbelievable circumstances.”
Kraft refused to comment on the tapes, but said that Flyaway had achieved “humbling success” despite its numerous difficulties. “It has been a complex, often chaotic, sometimes frustrating and very exhausting five weeks in which we have all dedicated our lives to this mission of saving others,” Kraft added.
Following the call, the activists voted to demand that Flyaway transfer all of its money to IWMF immediately. According to emails, Flyaway agreed later that day to give $700,000 to IWMF on top of the $500,000 it had already sent, and to direct future GoFundMe contributions to IWMF rather than Raven. On August 29, Marcus deactivated Flyaway’s GoFundMe page to new donations.
The same evening, a lawyer for Flyaway’s executives issued Ghafari a cease-and-desist letter, asking that she stop making “false and defamatory allegations” that Flyaway had collected funds for nonexistent flights.
Despite the need to flee before the Taliban takeover last month, Flyaway has lately assisted in two such attempts. Flyaway informed The Washington Post that it offered transportation, lodging, and other assistance to 57 individuals who were able to board an aircraft of 400 passengers organized by an Alaska-based military contractor and arrived in Doha, Qatar, on Sept. 17. Flyaway claimed it helped 27 individuals on a Sayara aircraft with 398 passengers that was partially financed by Flyaway’s $900,000 loan and arrived in Doha on Sept. 21.
Marcus said in the interview that he is still optimistic that “everything’s going to work out in a good way” and that more Afghans would be assisted.
“Obviously, there’s frustrations with not saving as many people as we’d hoped to by now,” Marcus said. But, he said, “how can you put a price tag on the people we have saved?”