Government databases getting misused for personal motives is actually pretty common.
AP did a report on this back in 2016 and while public records on this are fairly limited, they still found about 300 cases of database abuse from 2013 through 2015.
People are so unaware how common politically motivated murder was in the late 19th/early 20th century in the US. Our country is rittled with shallow graves belonging to labor and civil rights activists. Wikipedia for example has a list documenting anti-labor murders totaling just over 1100 that we know of. Much of that violence was especially targeted towards black labor organizers.
Kinda seems to be based on those weird scam letters you’d get. You’d get some random trinket that’s a “holy relic” but conveniently it only works if you mail back some money to show your “devotion”.