Report: FBI and IRS Investigating Kurt Busch’s Ex-Girlfriend

After ESPN released a May 22 report charging Patricia Driscoll, former girlfriend of NASCAR driver Kurt Busch, with questionable financial practices in her capacity as executive director of the Armed Forces Foundation (AFF), the FBI and IRS have decided to investigate her, according to Outside the Lines.

Driscoll, the executive director of AFF for the past twelve years, has denied the charges. She also faces a federal whistleblower complaint from a former foundation employee.

Charges leveled in the Outside the Lines report included:

1. Documents revealing the AFF had lent money for personal expenses, over $100,000 of which paid the credit card bill of Driscoll’s private security business — Frontline Defense Systems;
2. AFF’s federal tax filings and audit reports sometimes did not coincide;
3. Through May 4, AFF paid Driscoll and another person $96,000 in rent every year for its headquarters in a building they owned; allegedly breaking Washington zoning regulations.
4. AFF gave $15,000 to Driscoll for legal fees incurred in her child-custody case;
5. AFF gave Driscoll $6,315.22 for an infrared security camera intended for her Maryland home, and
6. AFF paid for her personal expenses on vacations to Paris and Morocco.
7. AFF paid Driscoll bonuses for fundraising in addition to her $171,027 yearly salary, and the bonuses were not listed on AFF’s tax filings or audit reports.

Driscoll’s attorney, L. Lin Wood, called ESPN’s report “baseless” adding: “Neither AFF nor Ms. Driscoll is aware of any current federal investigations being conducted into the operation of AFF.” Wood, speaking for AFF and Driscoll, said that a preliminary forensic analysis by AFF’s auditor had “concluded that the allegations of wrongdoing contained in the ESPN Article are inaccurate.”

Driscoll spearheaded the evolution of AFF from an organization collecting $100,000 in donations yearly to its current $13 million in revenue received in 2013. She has called Busch, the former Sprint Cup champion, AFF’s “celebrity ambassador.”

Driscoll had claimed that Busch smashed her head into a wall in his motor home last September 26 at Dover International Speedway. NASCAR suspended Busch indefinitely soon afterward. He rejoined the circuit in March.