Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Millions in potential fraud

I was waiting to post on this until some more information came out on it. But it looks like the Washington Post decided page 2 was good enough for the story that the Obama campaign has been allowing donors to use untraceable prepaid credit cards that makes it impossible to trace the limits on how much an individual is legally allowed to give and it masks the identity of the person donating.

We have heard the stories trickle out about the fake donors, "Good Will" and "Mr A Hitler of Berlin." But someone overseas and a non-citizen can easily give with a fake American name and address as well. This has given the Obama campaign presidential fundraising records. Of the $150 million Obama raised in September, nearly $100 million came from the internet.

How did that happen? The Obama campaign intentionally disabled all the default security checks that prevent basic fraud like fake addresses and no-name matches. In other words, if you go to the McCain donation site and write in "Mother Mary" with the address "heaven" with your credit card info, you will be rejected using automatic security checks. But if you had gone to the Obama donation site and done the same thing, your donation would have sailed through.

$100 million. Think about that.

Overseas donations from non citizens are illegal. So why would the Obama campaign do such a thing? It's all about a phrase I joke about all the time, it's easier to ask forgiveness than to ask permission. In other words the Obama campaign figures that the benefit of taking in the money now outweighs having to give it back, however bad it looks then, when Obama has already won.

Isn't that special?

Unlike McCain, Obama has not released the names of donors who gave under $200.00 because he doesn't have to. So we will not know if overseas donators gave in bundles until after the election. Well, after Obama has outspent McCain in the final push 5 to 1.

Does the end justify the means? It would seem so to the Obama campaign.

I don't expect election night to go smoothly. Not with the way this campaign operates.