Francisco V. (Cisco) Aguilar Nevada Secretary of State
It was a pretty straight-forward, even simple ask. On August 28, I emailed a public records request to the office of Nevada Secretary of State Francisco V. (Cisco) Aguilar. My request asked for two things: (1) All regulatory actions issued by his office against fundraising organizations violating a new state registration law enacted in 2021, and (2) all regulatory actions issued by his office since 2023–when he assumed power–for failure to obtain a state business license.
Aguilar’s agency, which is Nevada’s chief record keeper and occasional regulator, has set, then blown through two deadlines for producing the requested records. Last week, I was given a third deadline, December 2.
Oh, did I mention that Aguilar, a Democrat, is running for re-election, Election Day is November 3 and his agency’s responses to my request are not likely to cast this part of his tenure in a terribly favorable light?
Well, I have now. Read on.
Officially Nevada’s third highest elected official, Aguilar presides over an agency whose main duties include overseeing elections and maintaining a wide array of commercial registration records.
Thanks to a law the Nevada Legislature passed in 2021, those duties has included some regulation of fundraising beyond traditional tax-exempt charities. Almost any kind of non-religious outfit purporting to solicit money within the state–usually on the phone–benefiting various specified causes was barred from doing so without first registering with Aguilar’s agency and making financial filings. The enumerated causes included law enforcement, fire fighting, public safety, public health, patriotism, and anything else that sounds like a charitable mission. Aguilar’s office was given broad authority to issue cease-and-desist orders and issue civil financial penalties, which would also draw public attention to any culprits.
And God, were there. A huge number of these outfits I called faux charities (others call them scam charities). These were political action committees, poorly regulated at the federal level, that sound like charities when they cold-call you asking you for money but aren’t. Instead, they spent almost all the money raised in fundraising expense and hidden fees for their operators, generating terrible financial efficiencies. Donors got rooked. These telemarketers, who employed computer-generated voices using soundboard technology, operated nationally, but they seemed to find especially fertile ground in Nevada.
I’ve been writing about these operators and their activities in Nevada for a long time, focusing on the many who were dumb enough to call me–often repeatedly–at the New To Law Vegas world headquarters. (You can find my coverage by entering “faux charity” in the nearby search box.) There undoubtedly have been hundreds of thousands or even millions of such calls over the years to my fellow Nevadans. I haven’t found even one of these telemarketers properly registered in the state with what is now Aguilar’s agency.
That 2021 law was known as Senate Bill 62 and codified at Nevada Revised Statues 82A.025 et seq. It took effect on October 1 of that year. On its face, the measure put Nevada in the vanguard of consumer protection on this issue. Ha! Knowing something of the historically weak commitment to effective charitable regulation–or any regulation–in this state, I wrote in this space just 12 days after the law took effect, “Let’s all join the watch party … We’ll see if Nevada regulators invoke their brand new law requiring registration before soliciting.”
On May 23, 2023, just five month into Aguilar’s tenure, I filed my first request with his agency under the Nevada Public Records Act for paperwork in respect of the law about such wrongdoing dating back to 2021. Within a week. I got my response: “The Secretary of State’s Office has not issued any fines or cease-and-desist orders pursuant to NRS 82A.025 and therefore does not have any public records responsive” to my request.
Such an unexpectedly speedy response. I now think that might have had something to do with the fact most of that non-action occurred under the previous administration of Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske–a Republican.
I allowed another year to pass. On August 2, 2024, I filed my second request with Aguilar’s office for an accounting of its efforts to protect the Nevada citizenry against fundraising fraud under the 2021 law. I helpfully included a list of 13 unregistered faux charities I had written up after being personally solicited in Nevada. But this time Aguilar’s office–perhaps no longer able to blame the previous administration–stalled and stalled, for five months. Finally, in early February 2025, I got my response about the office’s response in the heyday of faux charity calling.
No cease-and-desist letters. No civil penalties. Ever.
The agency did say it had “open investigations” into three faux charities I highlighted. But I can’t find any indication now on Aguilar’s website of a final action.
So that brings me to my third and pending request. I added the ask about unregistered businesses, especially corporations from other states operating here without licenses, which are automatically given upon payment of a fee. As a journalist, I had encountered several while hearing complaints about others.
For some reason this request will not be answered until after the election. Aguilar is running again against Republican Jim Marchart, a hard-right The-2020-Election-Was-Stolen-From-Donald-J-Trump conspiracy proponent, QAnon supporter and former Nevada assemblyman.
A retired businessman, Marchart has tried to make an issue of Aguilar’s conduct of election matters, although Marchart doesn’t seem to have much to work with.The U.S. Department of Homeland Security earlier this year claimed there were nearly 16,000 noncitizens registered to vote in Nevada, then revised it downward to 185. Aguilar’s agency determined the correct number to be zero. (This prompted me to fashion an editorial cartoon on my Substack account, The Vivid View from William P. Barrett, which you can see by clicking here.) Carrying Trump’s water, the U.S. Department of Justice has peppered Aguilar with subpoenas seeking voter registration information.
Aguilar, a lawyer who like Marchart lives in Las Vegas, is a heavy favorite.
I invite the posting of comment below on any of the issues this post raises. In the past I have not been able to get Aguilar’s agency to respond to my perception of its shortcomings.
Fundraising regulation has not become an issue in the current campaign. ‘Tis a pity.