World Series hero Curt Schilling served on board of Bannon border wall group

Former major league pitcher Curt Schilling is among the prominent conservatives on the advisory board for “We Build the Wall”, the online fundraising group that was alleged by federal prosecutors Thursday to have defrauded donors of funds gathered to construct Donald Trump’s border wall along the southern border.

One-time Trump campaign manager Steve Bannon was one of four men indicted by a federal grand jury in Manhattan on Thursday for working to “defraud hundreds of thousands of donors” in relation to the non-profit, prosecutors said in a statement. Brian Kolfage, Andrew Badolato and Timothy Shea were also named in the alleged scheme to skim donations from the organization, which authorities said raised more than $25m.

Schilling, 53, is listed as one of 13 advisory board members for the non-profit, according to the its website. The full roster is a who’s who of leading figures adored in conservative and anti-immigration circles, including controversial former Milwaukee county sheriff David Clarke Jr, Blackwater founder and defense contractor Erik Prince, former Kansas secretary of state Kris Kobach and former Colorado congressman Tom Tancredo, who once campaigned for the White House on a stridently nativist message.

Schilling did not respond to multiple messages requesting comment on Thursday.

Robert S Spalding III, a retired US Air Force brigadier general who sat alongside Schilling on the board, told ABC News he would be “disappointed” if the allegations turned out to be true.

“I would like to wait and see what happens. It is the case that we’re presumed innocent until proven guilty,” Spalding said. “If it is proven true of course I would be disappointed.”

The We Build the Wall campaign started in 2018 as a GoFundMe by Kolfage, a military veteran, who has described some people crossing the southern border without documents as terrorists and drug traffickers. Though Trump had no direct ties to the campaign, the founders targeted US president’s supporters when drumming up donations, using the name “Trump Wall” when advertising the wall on a now-deleted GoFundMe page.

The We Build The Wall campaign states on its website that “we the People are coming together to build segments of border wall on private property and the best part is, we’re going to do it for a fraction of what it costs the government”.

It has a direct appeal to people who “are sick and tired of watching politicians in both parties obstructing president Trump's plan to build a wall on our southern border”.

Brian Kolfage, a military veteran, started the campaign in 2018 as a GoFundMe page. He has described some of the undocumented people who cross the border into the US from Mexico as terrorists and drug traffickers, and has accused critics of Donald Trump’s pledge to build a border wall and make Mexico pay for it as being cartel collaborators. The campaign created a video posted on YouTube of construction of metal barricades to attract anti-immigrant donors to the campaign. By spring 2019, the group had raised $22m out of its $1bn goal.

In December 2019, the campaign was seen by the Guardian building a private border wall in southern Texas despite a court injunction that ordered the work to be suspended.

Trump has criticised a section of wall that the group promoted after it showed signs of erosion, saying it was "only done to make me look bad", even though it was built by his supporters.

Schilling broadcast the fundraising link on his verified Twitter feed at least three times in December 2018 before he was named the board in January 2019.

“I was an early donor to Brian’s Border Wall GoFundMe,” Schilling said in a news release announcing his addition. “People coming together to get things done when our politicians fail is a cherished American past time [sic]. As President Reagan said, if not us, then who. If not now, then when.”

Less than a week after he came on, Schilling made a trip to the Texas border town of McAllen along with Bannon, Clarke, Kobach and Tancredo for an appearance to promote the fundraising initiative. By that point, We Build the Wall had already raised $20m in donations almost exclusively through crowdfunding.

Widely regarded as one of the greatest postseason pitchers of all time, Schilling was a key starter for the Arizona Diamondbacks when they won team’s first and only World Series title in 2001. The durable right-hander then helped the Boston Red Sox end the club’s 86-year championship drought in 2004, famously winning Game 6 of the American League Championship Series against the New York Yankees despite suffering a damaged tendon in his right ankle that left blood seeping out of his shoe. (Schilling sold the bloody sock at auction for $92,613 in 2013.)

The six-time All-Star remains the only pitcher in baseball history to have won a World Series game in his 20s, 30s and 40s.

Related: Curt Schilling descended from a compelling voice to a petty bully

Since he announced his retirement in 2009 following a 20-year career in the major leagues, Schilling has been involved in a number of controversies including a failed video game venture called 38 Studios that defaulted on $75m in loans from Rhode Island. (He was later sued by the state.)

More recently, Schilling has made headlines for his outré political views. While working as an on-air analyst for ESPN in 2015, he was suspended from the network’s coverage of the Little League World Series after he retweeted a post that compared Muslims and Nazi-era Germans. He was fired the following year for making disparaging comments about transgender people on Facebook while expressing support for a North Carolina law banning transgender people from restrooms that do not match the gender on their birth certificate.

After mulling a run for Elizabeth Warren’s Massachusetts Senate seat in 2016, Schilling last year told the Arizona Republic he was considering a run for Congress in Arizona, saying “the illegal immigration issue is not a joke”.

The news prompted a response from Trump, who tweeted: “Curt Schilling, a great pitcher and patriot, is considering a run for Congress in Arizona. Terrific!”

One of only 18 pitchers in major-league history to record 3,000 strikeouts, Schilling has claimed his right-wing political leanings have kept him out of the Hall of Fame.