Which documented events have verified the use of hired crowds, and what were the actual payments reported?
Executive summary
The practice of hiring crowds has been documented across a range of civic and political events—investigations and first‑hand reporting have verified hires at municipal hearings, political rallies and parades—but rigorous, itemized payment records are rare; the clearest reported figure is $50 per person at one high‑profile campaign event, while many other verified incidents list contractors or clients without disclosing sums [1] [2] [3]. Reporting also shows a pattern: public exposure usually comes from undercover reporting, public records, or follow‑up local journalism rather than from transparent contracting by the organizations that hired the crowds [4] [5].
1. The New Orleans power‑plant hearing — paid actors confirmed
Local investigative reporting found that people who testified in favor of Entergy’s proposal for a power plant included paid actors retained through Crowds on Demand, and multiple outlets reported that at least four participants were professional actors connected to the hire‑a‑crowd firm (Poynter summarizing The Lens reporting) [1]. The exposure prompted the New Orleans City Council to order preservation of documents related to the incident, underscoring that this was treated by local officials as a documented instance of hired testimony rather than mere accusation [1].
2. National campaign rallies — high‑visibility hires and a recorded per‑person rate
Mainstream outlets reported that actors were hired to cheer at Donald Trump’s 2015 campaign announcement, and some secondary summaries record a payment figure of $50 per person for that event; CNN and later compendia of "rent‑a‑crowd" reporting link Crowds on Demand and similar services to such campaign moments [2] [3]. This $50 figure appears in multiple overviews of rent‑a‑crowd cases as the most specific per‑person payment publicly reported for a major presidential campaign announcement [3].
3. Protest and parade manipulation — hired participants at demonstrations
Investigations and reporting show that hired or supplied participants have also turned up in demonstrations and parades: The Atlantic and other outlets cited instances where paid participants were used to inflate opposition at events including a reported case tied to the NYC Pride Parade and other protests, with day laborers or actors described as “hired” to appear on camera or in person [6]. These reports confirm the method—hiring people to stage support or opposition—though the specific payment amounts for those discrete protests were not published in the materials provided [6].
4. Campaign records and transparency gaps — what public records reveal (and don’t)
Public‑record searches and reporting on Crowds on Demand show that formal records link the firm to at least one documented campaign payment (the Six Californias ballot effort was identified in public records as a paying client), but most clients and contract amounts remain undisclosed because the company and some clients decline to identify each engagement in detail [5]. Journalists who went undercover or obtained internal documents have been central to confirming hires; official disclosure of fees is the exception rather than the rule in the sources reviewed [4] [5].
5. Payment patterns, margins of certainty and the limits of reporting
Across the documented examples, there are two consistent facts: journalists have verified that paid crowds operate in civic and political spaces, and precise, independently verifiable payment ledgers are seldom produced in public reporting [4] [7]. The clearest payment datum in the cited corpus is the widely‑repeated $50 per person figure tied to a 2015 campaign announcement [3], but for many confirmed incidents—municipal hearings, protests, or smaller political buys—the sources document hires or contractors without reporting an exact fee [1] [6] [5]. This gap creates space for competing narratives: critics emphasize deception and manipulation [2], companies involved highlight PR and event services and decline to name clients or fees [8].
Conclusion
Documented events with verified usage of hired crowds include municipal hearings in New Orleans, multiple political campaign rallies including the 2015 presidential announcement reported in national press, and instances of staged participants at protests and parades; however, except for a cited $50‑per‑person report tied to the 2015 campaign announcement, most published coverage confirms the presence of paid participants without producing detailed payment records, and public records identify only a handful of named campaigns as paying clients [1] [2] [3] [5]. Reporting is strongest on who supplied crowds and where they appeared, and weakest on systematic, transaction‑level accounting of how much was paid.