Barack Obama campaign accepts bogus gift card donations

Back on the first, I linked to a Ken Timmerman article about the Barack Obama campaign having millions in possibly fraudulent campaign donations. In that post I verified with the BHO campaign that they accept credit card-style gift cards. Those can be bought with cash and in large enough denominations that it would be possible to donate large sums of cash to their campaign. Those donations would be nearly untraceable, for instance, if it were done over the internet using one or more proxy servers.

Whether that post was the inspiration or not, someone else tried a test about a week ago, making a series of $5 donations to the BHO campaign using one of those cards and using a series of fake names: Bart Simpson, Family Guy, Daffy Duck, King Kong, and so on. (You would have known it was me if one of the names had been Rusty Shackleford). They clearly aren't checking those donations, and they may have turned off security features that match names and addresses with credit card numbers.

Details here.

It's time to put pressure on Congress to investigate his fundraising activities. Someone else needs to move that forward.

Related:
37,000 Obama donations possibly from foreign currency; federal law violations?

UPDATE: Neil Munro of the National Journal offers "FEC Rules Leave Loopholes For Online Donation Data" (link), in which he tries using gift cards to donate to both BHO and McCain. Only the BHO campaign accepted the donation. However, apparently Munro doesn't mention that AVS has to be turned off intentionally. And, the BHO campaign doesn't store credit card numbers.

Politics · Thu, 10/23/2008 - 08:14 · · Importance: 4