Nathan Ross Harlan is charged with four misdemeanor counts of accountability for deceptive election practices.

The charges stem from false signatures submitted on petitions for U.S. House candidate Michael Eisenhauer and U.S. Senate candidate Seth Bodnar.

The Cascade County elections office caught the fraudulent signatures in the spring and they were not counted.

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Elections staff notified the Cascade County Sheriff’s Office, Cascade County Attorney’s Office and the Montana Secretary of State’s Office, all of which have been investigating for months to bring the charges filed in Justice Court on Oct. 23.

In September, Cascade County Attorney Josh Racki said that about 810 potentially fraudulent signatures were submitted to the county elections office before the filing deadline, but none were counted toward either candidate’s ballot qualification total.

Both campaigns cooperated with the investigation, which found no wrongdoing by either campaign.

Harlan is not in custody and is believed to be out of state. His last known address was in Oxford, Miss. and his last known location was in Alabama.

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An arrest warrant was issued on Oct. 23 setting bond at $20,000.

If convicted, Harlan faces up to six months in county jail and/or a $500 fine.

Harlan and his company Sun Belt Strategies were a subcontractor, hired by Ballot Access Marketing, LLC, which had been retained by both campaigns in the spring to help gather the necessary signatures to qualify for the ballot.

In May. county elections staff identified irregularities while comparing petition signatures with voter signatures on file.

Staff noticed similar handwriting across numerous petition entries and petition signatures that didn’t match those on file.

One submitted petition packet included the name of an election employee’s adult daughter, who doesn’t live in Montana, raising additional concerns, according to charging documents.

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Elections staff identified four problematic petition packets, three for Eisenhauer and one for Bodnar and investigators subsequently identified voters in each of the packets who said they had not signed the petitions.

Elections officials brought their concerns to the sheriff and county attorney’s offices on May 26.

“Harlan is accused of soliciting, aiding, or abetting in deceptive election practices involving forged signatures and false declarations by signature gatherers. The complaint identifies the period of the alleged offenses as March 19 through May 26, 2026,” according to charging documents.

As independent candidates for Montana’s congressional seats,

• Eisenhauer needed 7,000 valid signatures from Montana voters on signed petitions with sworn or unsworn declarations and submit the petitions to county election offices by May 26, 2026
• Bodnar needed 13,327 valid signatures from Montana voters to qualify for the ballot

Each campaign had retained Ballot Access Marketing, owned by Christopher Thrasher, to help with signature gathering.

Before Feb. 12, Harlan contacted Thrasher and asked to subcontract to gather signatures, according to court documents and on Feb. 12, Thrasher signed a memorandum of understanding with Harlan as a subcontractor. The agreement required Harlan to gather 9,000 raw signatures from Montana voters within Montana’s 2nd Congressional District with a signature validity rate of at least 66.6 percent for the Eisenhauer campaign.

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Thrasher paid Harlan $5,000 in February as an advance to help him get to Montana and gather signatures.

Harlan also subcontracted with Thrasher for the Bodnar campaign, according to court documents.

Thrasher told investigators that his contact with Harlan was “sporadic” and in March, Harlan told Thrasher he had people on the ground who would mail in petitions.

On March 19, Harlan purchased a file from the Montana Secretary of State’s Office that contained names and addresses of registered Cascade County voters for $200.

The voter file doesn’t show mailing addresses, only residential addresses, so Harlan wouldn’t have known who the overseas voters were.

Thrasher told investigators that Harlan had mailed petition packets with signatures and unsworn declarations from “Steven Ball” and “Manuel Diaz” in March. Those names may be aliases and may not be real people, according to court documents.

The Montana SOS requires that signature gatherers provide either an affidavit of the signature gatherer with a signature in front of a notary or an affidavit of the signature gatherer with an unsworn declaration.

Those packets were sent to Eisenhauer’s campaign manager, Ted Dick, who delivered the packets to the Cascade County elections office by hand in May.

Terry Thompson, county elections administrator, and her staff found problems in four separate packets with unsworn declarations from Diaz and Ball.

Harlan didn’t gather the agreed-upon number or signatures, nor were more than 66 percent valid, in violation of his agreement with Thrasher, who sent him a contract termination and demand for repayment on April 13.

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It’s common for campaigns to hire third-party firms, who in turn hire signature gatherers, to get on the ballot.

During the week of May 18, Svetlana Pinocci, an election office employee, was processing petition packets with an unsworn declaration from Ball, stating he was from “Hixon,” Tenn., but the correct spelling of the town is Hixson, according to court documents.

His declaration stated the signatures were gathered April 1-8 and included 25 pages with a total of 237 signatures.

Thompson told investigators that it was unusual to receive so many pages with that many signatures on each page.

Her staff checks the petition signatures against the voter signatures on file in the ElectMT system by searching by the signer’s address or phone number, one of which must be provided on the petition.

Candidate petitions require signatures from only active voters, whereas constitutional initiatives don’t require active voter signatures.

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Pinocci told investigators that she noticed “odd things” as she went through the packet, such as signatures appearing similar throughout the 25 pages, a commonality in how the female names were written in big letters as opposed to male names written in tiny letters.

Thompson said signature gatherers are allowed to write the person’s name, but the voter has to sign their own name.

Thompson also noticed that the petition packets contained signatures of out-of-state military voters under the Uniformed and Overseas Citizen Absentee Voting Act.

While processing the petition packet from Ball, she noticed that most of the petition signatures didn’t match those on file.

Pinocci noticed her daughter’s name in the packet, “which she found bizarre since her daughter lives outside of the state and is not in Montana,” according to court documents. Her daughter’s name was also listed on the petition under her maiden name, but she goes by her married name.

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Thompson and Pinocci flagged the signature issues with Dick when he delivered petitions to the elections office around May 22.

The elections office only has the authority to exclude inactive and mismatched signatures, but not to deny an entire petition packet, according to court documents.

Dick called Thrasher and Eisenhauer about the problematic signatures and then told elections staff that they were aware of some issues regarding Ball’s signature gathering and had tried to pull those petitions from anything submitted to the elections office, according to court documents.

Thrasher called Thompson within the hour, repeating what Dick had told her. She told him she wanted authorization in writing to remove all of the signatures from Ball and Diaz, which she received a short time later from Thrasher.

Eisenhauer also contacted Thompson and agreed with pulling those petition packets. He told her he’d be in Great Falls the following week and offered to stop in the elections office.

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Elections staff found similar problems in two other packets, one with 25 pages and 239 signatures and another with 25 pages and 243 signatures, with an unsworn declaration from Manuel Diaz.

Signatures change over time or due to injuries, but when Pinocci showed these pages to Thompson, “it was so blatantly apparent that this individual had done the same thing, that the signatures were forged and did not match signatures on file,” according to court documents.

Thompson notified the Montana SOS office around the same time, which asked her to include the Montana Commissioner of Political Practices Chris Gallus on the emails.

Thompson told the SOS that she had sent another email to Thrasher that morning about the two new problematic packets and requested authorization to pull them.

She told investigators that she had received an email indicating Diaz was not employed by Thrasher’s company, but she didn’t know if he was a subcontractor or who had asked him to gather signatures, according to court documents.

While going through the petition packets, Pinocci and Thompson decided to call some of the UOCAVA voters who were listed that the office didn’t have signatures for on file.

Some of them answered and said they hadn’t signed any petitions.

“This was additional verification that the signatures had been forged,” according to court documents.

On some pages, the signatures looked about the same and had patterns where every “L” looked the same, or the “M” was similar. Thompson told investigators that her staff is trained to look at specific letters, such as how a signer swoops their “J” or “M,” according to court documents.

Thompson also verified a UOCAVA voter who is currently overseas and the office had prepared an electronic ballot for was included as a petition signer.

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The elections office provided the petition documents to a CCSO detective, along with the contact information they had for Thrasher, Dick and Diaz.

Thrasher confirmed the Diaz petitions had come through a subcontractor and so Thompson questioned packets from several others that Thrasher authorized to be withdrawn and not counted toward Eisenhauer’s requirement to make the ballot.

Eisenhauer visited the Cascade County elections office in May and “appeared to be upset” there were issues with signatures gathered in his name and “was angry that the contractor’s subcontractor had appeared to have forged signatures,” according to court documents.

In late May, a CCSO detective contacted Thrasher about the issues, to which Thrasher said a subcontractor had submitted “bullshit” petitions and that he thought they’d pulled all the problematic packets but it appeared a few made it through to the Cascade County elections office.

The CCSO detective asked Thrasher how his company hired subcontractors and he explained it’s done in a variety of ways, but in this instance, Harlan had been referred to him and it was his first and only time working with Harlan.

Thrasher told the detective that both Ball and Diaz names came through Harlan, who was based out of Mississippi.

Thrasher said a person claiming to be Diaz had texted him in early May about doing petitions with Harlan and not receiving payment.

Thrasher said the number he’d had for Harlan was out of service but the same person had texted him later from a different number, which he provided to the detective, according to court documents.

Thrasher told the detective that the same thing had happened with submissions for the Bodnar campaign, but guessed those petitions were pulled but were missed and submitted for the Eisenhauer campaign, according to court documents.

Thrasher told the detective that he’d caught fraud before and never had any false signatures be submitted to an election’s office other than with Harlan.

Thrasher said he’d asked colleagues about Harlan when he initially asked to subcontract and had heard good things, but later heard Harlan had “flaked out” on some other big contractors.

Thrasher said the last call he received from Harlan was in May asking when signature gathers would be paid, according to court documents. He said Harlan never sent invoices for additional costs.

The CCSO detective began researching Harlan’s company, Sun Belt Strategies, and found Harlan’s LinkedIn profile.

He also found a LinkedIn profile for Sofia Perez, which indicated she was the company’s general manager for logistics from January to June 2026.

The company had an association with the Lafayette Chamber of Commerce, which listed the company’s address in Oxford, Miss. and a phone number, which were also Harlan’s address and phone number.

On June 1, the CCSO detective called the director of the Lafayette Chamber, who said she couldn’t remember meeting Harlan, but he had joined in September 2025 with a student membership.

The detective’s research also indicated Harlan has addresses in:

• Salem, Ohio
• Dallas, Texas
• Arlington, Texas
• Ridgeland, Miss.
• Tahoka, Texas
• Caryville, Tenn.
• Ormond Beach, Fla.
• Knoxville, Tenn.
• Morgantown, W. Va.
• Las Vegas, Nev.
• Lubbock, Texas
• Leander, Texas
• Tampa, Fla.
• Tallahassee, Fla.
• Houston, Texas
• Scottsdale, Ariz.
• Athens, Ohio
• Akron, Ohio
• Columbus, Ohio
• North Canton, Ohio
• Auburn, Ala.
• Leander, Texas
• Alliance, Ohio
• and multiple cell phone numbers with different area codes including 330, 806, 773, 737, and 304

He was listed as previously having an Ohio driver’s license, which listed an address in Morgantown, W. Va. and noted he’s 5’9″, 210 pounds, brown hair, brown eyes, and that license expired in 2020.

On June 3, the detective attempted to contact Diaz at the number he’d allegedly contacted Thrasher from, but no one answered or returned a message.

A search of the phone number indicated it was associated with Jovita Cortez in Chicago, Ill. and the number Diaz included on the petitions returned to Paetec Communications in Miama, Fla.

The detective also called that number, but no one answered and the mailbox was full so he couldn’t leave a message.

In June, Thrasher told the CCSO detective that he’d located a W-9 for Harlan which included an address in Ridgeland, Miss.

The CCSO detective had a case go to trial over the summer and attended training so was unable to work on this investigation.

On Sept. 2, the detective contacted Sofia Perez via the phone number listed on her LinkedIn profile.

She said she no longer worked for Harlan, who she descrived as a “liar” and Sun Belt Strategies no longer existed, according to court documents.

She said she’d be hired in January and worked remotely for Harlan, recruiting petitioners and signature gatherers through Indeed posts. He contacted and hired her through LinkedIn and she never met Harlan in person, according to court documents.

She didn’t handle onboarding of workers or handle any petition signatures.

Perez said she had contact with a Nick Fields and a Malachi Frank at the company.

She said she had a contract for Harlan to pay her $1,000 per month during her senior year until she graduated, but in the third month, she had to contact him repeatedly for payment and he didn’t pay her about $1,500 nor did she receive a W-2, according to court documents. In checking her Apple Pay account, Harlan had only paid her $1,200 in in February and $500 in April.

Perez told the detective that Harlan paid her via Apple Pay and that the company had numerous pay issues.

She said a large campaign in Texas ended because whoever had hired Harlan’s company wanted the workers removed with one woman showing up screaming at the polls and someone else going to the polls in a hairnet.

Perez said workers called her screaming and telling her to die because they hadn’t been paid, even though that wasn’t her role, according to court documents.

Perez gave the detective phone numbers she had for Harlan, two of which she believed to be disconnected, and that he moved frequently and she didn’t know where he was.

Perez said there were similar issues to Cascade County for a candidate in North Carolina, Gunner Wieboldt, and provided his contact information to the detective.

When the detective told her what was happening in Cascade County, Perez said she wouldn’t put it past Harlan or his associates to make up names but didn’t know if they were faking signatures, according to court documents.

Perez said that she decided to leave the company after Harlan failed to pay her for the third month and believed he was running from people he owed more money or were suing him.

On Sept. 2, the CCSO detective called Ball at the number included on a petition packet with an unsworn declaration, but there was no answer and his message went unreturned.

The number returned to Kenneth Stanley Lewis in Madisonville, La.

The CCSO detective contacted Wieboldt, who confirmed he was familiar with Harlan and Sun Belt Strategies.

Wieboldt told the detective that some signatures “didn’t pass the sniff test,” and asked Harlan about a person filling out all of the signature sheets and that they appeared to be fraudulent, according to court documents.

Wieboldt said Harlan’s company was hired by another organization and started doing his own audit of the signatures when they fell short of the required number in March.

Wieboldt said that because he was running as an Independent, local Republicans said they could support him through a C-4 organization to gather signatures to oppose the Democratic candidate, but he wasn’t sure of the C-4’s identity but believed it to be conservative-leaning and affiliated with the Republican Party, according to court documents.

Wieboldt told the detective that he didn’t pursue action against Harlan or Sun Belt Strategies since he hadn’t contracted with them, but people were “clearly doing some weird shenanigans” that he could not control,” according to court documents.