UPDATE: The best summery, including a description of the whitewash by the MSM is Atlas Shrugged, which has many links to details of the story.
Barack Obama has recorded unprecedented contributions the past few months. Most, apparently, are internet based. This story makes me wonder what is happening. How is the credit card company processing these items ? I use my middle initial in my name on credit cards as a way to avoid possible fraud. If my middle initial is not included in the name field, the charge is rejected. Then we hear this.
Mary T. Biskup, of Manchester, Missouri. Biskup got a call recently from the Obama campaign, which was trying to figure out why she donated $174,800 to the campaign — well over the contribution limit of $2,300.
The answer she gave them was simple. “That’s an error.”
Biskup, a retired insurance manager who occasionally submits recipes to the local paper, says someone used a credit card to donate the money in her name. No charges ever showed up on her credit card statement.
“We’re not out a penny,” Biskup said. “I gather that someone has hacked into something using other people’s credit cards and putting my name on it.”
How did the Obama campaign get any money from this transaction if the credit card was never debited ? Yet it appears that they did get the money. Even the pro-Obama media is getting interested.
The Obama campaign has shattered all fund-raising records, raking in $458 million so far, with about half the bounty coming from donors who contribute $200 or less. Aides say that’s an illustration of a truly democratic campaign. To critics, though, it can be an invitation for fraud and illegal foreign cash because donors giving individual sums of $200 or less don’t have to be publicly reported. Consider the cases of Obama donors “Doodad Pro” of Nunda, N.Y., who gave $17,130, and “Good Will” of Austin, Texas, who gave more than $11,000—both in excess of the $2,300-per-person federal limit. In two recent letters to the Obama campaign, Federal Election Commission auditors flagged those (and other) donors and informed the campaign that the sums had to be returned. Neither name had ever been publicly reported because both individuals made online donations in $10 and $25 increments. “Good Will” listed his employer as “Loving” and his occupation as “You,” while supplying as his address 1015 Norwood Park Boulevard, which is shared by the Austin nonprofit Goodwill Industries. Suzanha Burmeister, marketing director for Goodwill, said the group had “no clue” who the donor was. She added, however, that the group had received five puzzling thank-you letters from the Obama campaign this year, prompting it to send the campaign an e-mail in September pointing out the apparent fraudulent use of its name.
What is going on ?
Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt said the campaign has no idea who the individuals are and has returned all the donations, using the credit-card numbers they gave to the campaign. (In a similar case earlier this year, the campaign returned $33,000 to two Palestinian brothers in the Gaza Strip who had bought T shirts in bulk from the campaign’s online store. They had listed their address as “Ga.,” which the campaign took to mean Georgia rather than Gaza.)
If the credit card numbers are fraudulent, how do they return the money ? If the credit card is never debited, as in the first case above, where did the money come from ? In at least one case, the credit card was debited, so there are cases on conventional fraud benefiting Obama.
Steve and Rachel Larman say a strange credit card charge appeared on their statement this month — a $2300 donation to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. The Larman’s say they don’t want this to be about their political affiliation, but they say they’re not about to give the Obama campaign any help from their pocketbook.
They said they notified Chase, their credit card bank, to report the fraud.
“(They) said that they had seen-they were familiar with this,” said Steve Larman. “It was fraud, they believe through telemarketing but they were going to be doing some more investigations.”
This is a mystery that will never be solved if Obama is elected. Here is part of the answer. You turn off address verification to facilitate anonymous donors. You’re supposed to refund the money but I wonder if that will ever happen. Not if the Democrats run all three branches of government.
More here. When we laughed at the 200,000 Germans cheering Obama and said they could not vote, the joke was on us.
Now if it’s against the law for customers to do business with you anonymously, then facilitating anonymous transactions goes beyond just being a business decision. But if the consequences of looking the other way are no more than having to refund the money several months down the road, then maybe you’re happy to take the money as an interest free loan in the meantime.
They are donating millions to Obama by credit card and laughing at us rubes. We thought our elections were ours to decide. Obama knew better.
The Washington Post has a story this morning which, as expected, goers easy on the Obama campaign. It does have cautionary words about the chances of ever investigating the fraudulent contributions.
How the FEC might attempt to tackle these problems is unclear. Both parties have filed formal complaints calling on the agency to investigate their rival. Only McCain will automatically be subjected to an audit, because his campaign accepted funds from the Treasury. There is no requirement that Obama’s books be audited, and FEC-watchers predicted that it could be tough to find the four votes needed to approve an audit, given that the panel comprises three Republican and three Democratic appointees.
Under current law, there is also very little policing of small-dollar contributions. The false donations uncovered by news outlets or by rival campaigns have all involved more than $200, because those contributions must be disclosed in published reports. The campaigns are not required to share any information about donors who give less than $200. And they are not required to even keep records of donors who give less than $50 — they can even give cash.
I guess this is the last of this story we’ll see if Obama wins the election.