> $140 Million Ponzi Fraud Is Haunting Georgia GOP Ahead of Midterms

NEWNAN, Ga.—James McMaster, 94 years old, lost about $1.3 million in the collapse of First Liberty Building & Loan, the Georgia investment firm built by a family of Republican power brokers. He recently got a call to contribute to a GOP campaign.

“I said, ‘OK, let me tell you. Here’s where I’m at,’” McMaster said. “‘When you get all the politicians that have received funds from them and get them to return them, then maybe we can talk.’”

Nationally, Republicans face familiar midterm headwinds, from inflation to the war with Iran. Georgia’s GOP is contending with a problem notable to the Peach State: a $140-million Ponzi-scheme scandal that has ruptured the party’s ultraconservative wing.

The saga of First Liberty and the Frost family that ran it—and were long among the Georgia GOP’s most influential names—haunts the midterms. As investigations continue, politicians face pressure to return donations from the defunct company. The sentencing of founder and patriarch Edwin Brant Frost IV is scheduled for October.

Across Georgia, the Frosts were GOP fixtures and known as prominent evangelical   Christians. At a prayer meeting, Frost IV said God told him, “I’m going to clean house, and I’m going to use a broom named Trump.” The Frosts sided with Trump against other Republicans, including Raffensperger and Gov. Brian Kemp, when he disputed his 2020 loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the state.

First Liberty courted investors through conservative outlets such as Erick Erickson’s syndicated radio show and the late Charlie Kirk’s podcast. In 2024, the patriarch’s son, Edwin Brant Frost V, known as “five,” told a John Fredericks streaming-show audience to get in touch, “if you want to participate in the patriot economy and get Wall Street returns for Main Street investors.”

Prosecutors said Frost IV used money raised in part for more than $5 million in “personal and sometimes extravagant expenditures,” including $230,000 to rent a Maine vacation home, $140,000 in jewelry, $20,800 for a Patek Philippe watch, $2 million-plus on credit-card bills and more than $570,000 on political contributions. Recipients ranged from Republican state legislators to Donald Trump, according to the office of Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

Frost IV and First Liberty solicited people to invest in what were marketed as short-term, high-interest bridge loans to companies, with promises that investors would get returns as high as 18%, according to prosecutors and a civil SEC lawsuit. Some of that money did fund bridge loans, but many of those later defaulted.

Frost IV pleaded guilty to wire fraud in May. He faces up to 20 years in prison, plus fines and restitution to victims.

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