A Carbon County official wants to let residents know that a donation form circulating through the area is not coming from a county organization.

On Thursday, Commissioners’ Chairman Wayne Nothstein spoke about a recent mailer that was brought to his attention by a constituent.

The mailer, from Capt. Brian C. Smith of the American Federation of Police and Concerned Citizens out of Titusville, Florida, stated that the nonprofit organization was collecting donations from Carbon County residents for the Police Family Survivors Fund to benefit the spouses and children of police officers killed in the line of duty.

The mailer asks people to donate from $15 to $100.

Nothstein said he felt the mailer gives the impression funds are supporting Carbon County police families.

“I think it gives a false impression,” he said, noting that maybe some of the funds do if a law enforcement officer does die in the line of duty, but he wasn’t sure.

“It doesn’t come from the county itself,” Nothstein said.

According to the Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s office, in 2019, Minnesota permanently banned the American Federation of Police and Concerned Citizens from soliciting donations in the state and pay restitution in the amount of $298,637 for fraudulent practices.

Ellison’s office had sued the organization in October 2018 “for deceiving Minnesotans in multiple ways, including by misrepresenting that donations would only be used to help families of police officers killed in the line of duty.

However, the vast majority of AFPCC’s charitable program spending - 83% - went to paying its fundraisers and other for-profit agents to send mailers with claimed “public education” content, not providing aid to police families.

The attorney general “also alleged that AFPCC misrepresented to donors that their money would be set aside for families in the donor’s local city or county by advertising an ‘Area Appeal’ or ‘special campaign’ for the families in a donor’s local area.

“In reality, donations were used for all of AFPCC’s expenses nationwide, and were not set aside for any specific city or state,” Ellison said in 2019.