The sprawling, secretive network of Koch-backed groups have vowed to spend exorbitantly to influence this fall’s midterm elections, to the tune of $500 million. Although numerous groups comprise the “Kochtopus,” two entities are particularly central to the billionaires’ political spending activities: their political arm, Americans for Prosperity, and their “secret bank,” Freedom Partners Action Fund. According to a recent Bloomberg report, Koch spending on TV ads this cycle has shifted from the former to the latter, in what amounts to just the latest move in the Kochs’ ceaseless, expensive political spending shell game.

To date, AFP has purchased significantly more airtime than Freedom Partners — from January 7 to September 30 of this year, AFP has run 28,735 ads in Senate races to Freedom Partners’ 8,185, according to Bloomberg. Yet as ofSeptember 5, AFP has all but “gone dark” on the airwaves, transitioning television spending to Freedom Partners. Coincidence? Seemingly not. As the Bloomberg report notes, September 5 marked a milestone — 60 days from Election Day — that would have required AFP, technically a nonprofit, to make additional disclosures about its political spending under IRS rules. Freedom Partners Action Fund, a super PAC, does not face these same requirements. Given that the billionaire brothers went to extreme lengths (and legal fees) to create several sub-entities to obscure the flow of money in and out of Freedom Partners, it takes no stretch of the imagination to believe that this latest move is meant to skirt disclosure rules.

In all likelihood, we won’t know exactly what Freedom Partners is up to this election season until much later, when their tax returns from this period are filed. Even then, the Kochs and their allies go to great lengths to obscure their spending on behalf of extreme GOP candidates, who would be in “bad shape” without the leg up they’re getting from the Kochs.