Here's what actual election fraud looks like

But someone did campaign for Rodriguez. On October 2, a Florida political committee, Our Florida PC PAC, was created. The following day, someone donated $370,000 to the PAC. It’s still unclear who made the contribution—initially, Our Florida listed an Atlanta-based LLC with no contact information as the donor, but in December, the PAC revised its paperwork to identify a different entity as the source of the money: Colorado-based Grow United, Inc. Days after the contribution was deposited, it was used to pay for mailers supporting Alex Rodriguez’s candidacy.

Investigators still don’t know who is behind Grow United—its listed address is a UPS store—but Alex Rodriguez was not the only mysterious candidate supported by the company. Grow United poured $180,000 into a different newly formed PAC called The Truth, which backed a woman named Jestine Iannotti in her state Senate campaign against another sitting Democrat. Like Alex Rodriguez, Iannotti ran as an independent. She also had no prior political experience and took no steps to campaign, other than filing the paperwork to run. She won 2 percent of the vote in November; the Republican challenger prevailed in the race by a 3 percent margin. Though Iannotti is white, mailers sent by the PAC—and paid for with Grow United’s donation—used a stock image of a Black woman. Among other anodyne statements, the mailers said Iannotti would help get “special interest money out of politics.”