The budget chair of one of America’s largest school systems “spent years pulling off a premeditated con to steal two airplanes worth $1.5 million,” according to court documents in a lawsuit. He’s part of the Fairfax County School Board, which mismanages a $4 billion school system.
The Daily Wire explains:
Kyle McDaniel, a member of Virginia’s Fairfax County School Board, was accused by his private-sector employer of using corporate credit cards to spend $150,000 on personal expenses, strip clubs, and his school board campaign….Now, that employer, Blue Label Aviation, added in court documents that it has since discovered that McDaniel’s alleged fraud was significantly worse. It outlined methodical, years-long financial fraud that raises questions about how the all-Democrat school board could continue to let McDaniel oversee the finances of one of America’s largest school systems.
FCPS this month resorted to enlisting children to beg for more money, telling them the school system is in a financial crisis, has already cut all non-essential services, and that if the county doesn’t steer unprecedented amounts of money to the schools, children will suffer. It gave them an activist “toolkit” to pressure the leaders who disburse funding to the school system….
McDaniel owned an aviation company called Commonwealth Aviation Services. In March 2023, McDaniel struck a deal with the owner of another company, Aero Elite, to merge them into a new company called Blue Label. Virtually all of Commonwealth’s value came from the fact that it owned two planes, leading it to be valued at $1.5 million for purposes of the merger. But just before the deal went through, McDaniel secretly stripped its assets, changing the ownership of the planes to a different entity and essentially selling Blue Label an empty shell….
“As a direct and proximate result of McDaniel’s fraud in the inducement, the shareholders of Aero Elite, now shareholders of the Plaintiff, were duped into issuing stock to McDaniel and his father for essentially nothing, and the plaintiff was therefore damaged in the amount of $1,500,000.00,” the amended complaint said.
“McDaniel made fraudulent misrepresentations about the ownership of the aircraft which was a material fact and formed the basis of the merger. McDaniel secretly re-registered the aircraft into phony companies while negotiating the terms of the merger, knowing that the FAA registration process would take many months to complete and be listed on the FAA registry,” it continued.
Shortly before the deal went through, McDaniel used the FAA’s database to re-register two Piper Archer airplanes to entities called N1463T LLC and N555AZ LLC – companies that did not even exist, according to Blue Label Aviation. Over a year later, after Blue Label executives confronted McDaniel over his use of corporate credit cards to buy luxuries for himself, McDaniel formed LLCs “to match the names of the phony entities that he had registered the said aircraft to” and “listed his home address as the registered address,” Blue Label says.
State records describe the LLCs as being incorporated on February 9, 2025, just before the lawsuit was filed and shortly after Blue Label CEO Timothy Fisher confronted McDaniel on January 22, at which point “the defendant confessed” and said he “wanted a week” to have an attorney review whether McDaniel should accept Fisher’s demands that he resign and return his corporate credit cards.
“McDaniel then started attempting to sell the aircraft to unknowing third parties. McDaniel’s actions constitute multiple acts of fraud, conversion of company assets and fraudulent misrepresentations,” Blue Label says.
