Obama’s Fraud
It is becoming increasingly clear that one of the major reasons Senator Barack Obama was able to raise many millions for his campaign is that he enables supporters to donate more than the limit established by U.S. law. Additionally, the credit card system used by the Obama campaigns enables foreigners to donate whatever amount they wish by credit card as well.
The scope of the fraud committed by the Obama campaign became clear in recent days after conservative readers of various websites decided to try to donate money to Obama’s campaign using a fake name, fake address, but a real credit card. The result: each and every single time, the donation was accepted.
A reader living in a foreign country used a foreign credit card, gave a foreign address as his home address, etc. This reader’s donation was also accepted.
When these readers tried to do the same at John McCain’s website, their donation was denied.
Suddenly it has become clear why Sen. Obama received, say, $17,000 from one “Good Will.” It also becomes abundently clear why the Obama campaign refuses to release the records of all those who donated less than $200 (each time).
Conservative blogger and strategist Patrick Ruffini – who was George W. Bush’s “web guy” and “specializes in online campaign finance” – took a look at the situation and decided it war a clear case of fraud. “The issue centers around the Address Verification Service (or AVS) that credit card processors use to sniff out phony transactions. I was able to contribute money using an address other than the one on file with my bank account (I used an address I control, just not the one on my account), showing that the Obama campaign deliberately disabled AVS for its online donors,” Ruffini reported for his The Next Right website.
“The end result? ‘Donors’ like ‘Doodad Pro’ can submit tons of donations totaling well above the $2,300 limit using different bogus addresses (this does clarify how donations from “Palestine”, or PA, got through). And the campaign has no way to reliably de-dupe these donations, besides looking at the last four digits of the credit card number, which with 3.1 million donors is an identifier that could be shared by literally hundreds of donors, and is not as easy to eyeball like a common name or address would be. The ability to contribute with a false address, when the technology to prevent it not only exists but comes standard, is a green light for fraud.”
There are some who say that the Obama campaign has started sending some fake contributions back to where they came from. However, the pace at which this is being done has given many the distinct impression that they are doing it as slowly as possible in order to be able to use the money first. The money can then, of course, be returned much, much later, or not at all of course, when no one is watching.
The Obama campaign seems to be enabling fraud, on a scale seldom seen before.
Even if one gives his campaign the benefit of the doubt, the ‘enabling fraud’ charge still holds true. IOW, as you mentioned, Michael, *perhaps* it was honest mistakes that allowed these fraudulent or illegal donations to be made (of course, even that is a bit of a stretch to believe, since those who run campaigns are professionals with experience, and they would know better), then there should at least be an admission that they screwed up in not putting in the proper safeguards on the online donations.
It’s a lot like ACORN, actually…I’ve heard the following two defenses for their supposed lack of culpability in fraud:
1. They are required by law to turn in all voter registration forms, but they do check for fraud and flag the ones that are obviously to be discarded.
2. It’s not their fault that their employees have committed these acts, in fact it’s really a case of ACORN being a victim of these unscrupulous employees who get paid without doing honest canvassing for real registrations.
These two excuses don’t hold water- because if the organization knows #1 to be true, then they would know that it would not be good practice to pay people for turning in fraudulent registrations. Thus at the minimum, if their work was really being done in good faith, they’d put in a simple safeguard by checking each employees stacks at the end of the day and not paying for the fraudulent ones. That would nip the practice in the bud immediately, when the employees realized they’d only be paid for real voter registrations done properly.
Same with the Obama campaign- if this came to their attention after the initial online donor form was launched, it wouldn’t take them weeks or months to fix the problem IF THEIR INTENT WAS REALLY TO CURTAIL ILLEGITIMATE DONATIONS.
In fact according to those who were looking into it today, as soon as this began circulating on right wing blogs, the problem was suddenly fixed! Amazing, huh?
It’s not clear to me exactly what’s going on here — though clearly something’s very wrong. But one of the commenters over at HotAir says that in September (he thinks), he tried to make a donation but used the wrong address. The donation was rejected. Today, though, it went right through?
That would seem to imply that something changed between then and now, would it not?
As a software developer I can say that credit card charges are almost always made with the help of a 3rd party vendor. Part of the setup to accept credit cards is to decide whether the name and address on the card will be verified against the address. This is something that could be changed at any time, perhaps in response to a legit donation being rejected, and perhaps by a software flunky like myself, on his/her own initiative.
At any rate, Obama obviously reneged on his promise to limit his spending to federally-provided funds and is now playing fast and loose with campaign financing laws. Not that he needs the money.