by Bill Trotter/Bangor Daily News
BAR HARBOR—A Hancock man has been found guilty of theft for embezzling $225,000 from a former U.S. Senate candidate.
Matthew T. McDonald, 45, worked for Max Linn on Linn’s two U.S. Senate campaigns in Maine before Linn died in 2021 at his home in Bar Harbor. Before he died, Linn asked McDonald to invest the funds in cryptocurrency on his behalf.
McDonald never did, though, and when Linn asked for it back, McDonald accused Linn of pointing a gun at him in a dispute over the money and went to court to seek a restraining order against the former Senate candidate. McDonald claimed that Linn instead wanted to use the funds to buy drugs from Indonesia that were being touted as COVID-19 cures, but Linn denied the accusations.
McDonald later told police he liquidated the cryptocurrency by investing it in the futures market, where it promptly was lost, according to court documents.
McDonald was charged with theft and, at the end of a two-day trial in Hancock County Unified Criminal Court in Ellsworth, was convicted Thursday by a jury of stealing the money.
A spokesperson for the state attorney general’s office declined to comment on the verdict on Friday. A sentencing for McDonald has not yet been scheduled, the spokesperson said.
McDonald also is facing scrutiny in federal court over the alleged theft. Linn’s widow and his estate filed suit against McDonald in U.S. District Court in Bangor in August 2023, seeking to recover at least some of the money from McDonald and writing in their complaint that the loss of the funds “ultimately contributed to [Linn’s] untimely death.”
Last year, a federal judge denied a motion by McDonald to dismiss the federal complaint and later found him in default and ruled in favor of Linn’s widow and estate, ordering McDonald to repay the funds.
But a federal magistrate judge wrote in a recommended decision last month that McDonald does not have the ability to repay the money and that the court should not issue an installment order setting deadlines for when payments must be made.
“The final balance on [McDonald’s] most recent bank statement [from February 2025] was $29.19,” U.S. Magistrate Judge John Nivison wrote in the document.
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