The Obama Campaign's Massive Credit Card Scandal

[Wardogs]

Thursday, October 23, 2008
The Obama Campaign's Massive Credit Card Scandal
http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2008/10/obama-campaigns-massive-credit-card.html

Yes we can! (Knowingly accept millions in fraudulent donations)

You know how ACORN registered thousands of bogus voters like Mickey Mouse and Daffy Duck? ACORN's handlers at the Obama campaign seem to be accepting contributions from Mickey and Daffy too.

It turns out that the Obama campaign's crack team of fundraisers decided to turn off all security validation for credit-card donations. Want to enter the name Pedro Martinez when the credit-card belongs to Arnold Fizbin? Need to use the ZIP code 99999 when the card owner's ZIP is 02154? No problem! The Obama campaign doesn't care!

In order for this to occur, the "Address Verification System has to be specifically disabled to allow this fraud."
http://minx.cc/?blog=86&post=276324#c3243350

Having worked for companies that process credit cards online, it is necessary to go through and manually disable the safeguards that they put in place to verify a person's address and zip code with the cardholder's bank. But international banks don't currently have the same safeguards that banks in the US have...

So most likely they've disabled the necessary safeguards for US cards which their merchant bank would be angry about if they found out since it exposes them to risk, as well as international cards which is an even greater risk because there's no way to verify the information electronically for most countries, so they could just say they're in the US with phony info and the card will still process online. The One could then just claim that they said they were from America...


It's a pattern.

An earlier analysis of donations revealed millions of dollars in illegal donations from made up characters like "Doodad Pro" and "Good Will". These contributions were conveniently structured to fit in the "under $200" category, which the Obama campaign (unlike McCain) has refused to reveal.

Andy McCarthy described the abuse of the campaign finance laws by the Obama campaign in stark terms:
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YmZkNDAwY2I0ZTNjNGNlYWRkNmUwZjRjYTg1ZGU0MWM=

A... review of the Obama campaign finance filings found that the FEC had asked for the redesignation or refund of 53,828 donations, totaling just under $30 million.

But none involves the donors who never appear in the Obama campaign reports, which the [Center for Responsive Politics] estimates at nearly half the $426.8 million the Obama campaign has raised to date.


Let's see. Half of $426 million is... carry the one... about $200 million! And this isn't headline news?

Just a tad over the limit

But the new revelations of illegal donations appear to be a mixture of stolen (and unvalidated) credit-cards and willful violations of finance law. I'm not a math major, but Mary T. Biskup's contribution of $174,800 would appear to be over the $2,300 limit.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/10/21/obamas_175000_donor.html

Scott Johnson reports that tests of the Obama website confirm that all security validation is disabled.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2008/10/021856.php

I went back to the Obama site and made three additional donations using the names Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and Bill Ayers, all with different addresses. All the transactions went through using the same credit card. I saved screenshots of the transactions... I tried the exact same thing at the McCain site and it didn't allow the transaction."


Change!

Obama campaign website accepted foreign campaign donations

In May of this year I noted the fact that the Obama campaign ran the only website that permitted donations from foreign countries without any proof of citizenship.
http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2008/05/obamas-donation-website-accepts-illegal.html

In contrast, the Hillary and McCain sites both required documentation before accepting a donation from a foreign country.

While the Times' CSI unit probes Joe the Plumber's health records and scrutinizes Sarah Palin's shoe bills, an election is well nigh being stolen right under their very eyes. Although this scandal is a doozy, the Times is silent about this flagrant abuse of election law.
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/31658_Obama_Campaign_Credit_Card_Fraud

Eleven days remain until the election... hundreds of millions of dollars in illegal and foreign donations appear to have flowed into Obama's coffers... and Manhattan's Pravda can't rustle up a story. Not to worry. I give them six months.

Don't let these criminals steal the election. Vote

 

[Bad Hand]

If you say anything against Obamanation it is a racist remark and they will hunt you down. Obamanation is a POS!!!

 

[Fisher]

This could be a huge story!

 

[Rearden Steel]

Stunning.....Just stunning.....

We are going to lose the Republic....

 

[CTFIREBATTCHIEF]

Stunning.....Just stunning.....

We are going to lose the Republic....

Ya know whats funny? The "BIG O" is raking money in hand over fist from all over the world, he's awash in dough and with all of that, he's still just about in a tie with McCain. He should be blowing him out of the water and he's not. My gut feeling is that Michelle might be just a TAD bit early asking to get into the White House to measure the drapes . Keep the faith! We're not done yet. Not while we all still draw breath on this earth.

Wonder how his Grandma is doing?

 

[blueinterceptor]

this problem was discussed the other day on fox news

when people called to complain they were asked to allow the charges to remain and not complain.
and not seek reimbursement.


and early redistribution of the wealth ?

 

[Old Girl]

Can anyone here send this info to Bill O'Reilly? Also tell him to have his people check out TimeBomb as so much is posted about Obama.

This could be a really big bombshell. I tried to call but his mailbox was full. I called l-888-369-4762. Would someone try to reach him and tell him about this scam of the credit cards? I will not be available to try. This should be great. I don't know if this is a good number - there may be other better ones to reach him.

Calling or reaching Rush Limbaugh would be productive.

Some of our activist friends on TB could do a good job on this but this 81 year Old Girl can't handle it.

Thanks - go guys, go!!

Old Girl

 

[Rearden Steel]

Ya know whats funny? The "BIG O" is raking money in hand over fist from all over the world, he's awash in dough and with all of that, he's still just about in a tie with McCain. He should be blowing him out of the water and he's not. My gut feeling is that Michelle might be just a TAD bit early asking to get into the White House to measure the drapes . Keep the faith! We're not done yet. Not while we all still draw breath on this earth.

I agree with you. I believe McCain will eek it out........and the disaster will unfold from there. We are going to hear “the Republicans have stolen another election” and all the other BS. No one in the MSM will look at Acorn, the dead voting, credit card fraud and foreign donations and realize McCain's victory is actually larger then what is being reported.

The real problem is just under half this country will believe this nonsense and because of this, we will not be able to enact the proper safe guards to prevent it from happening again. The lefties are a win at all cost group, the Constitution, laws, morals be damned.

 

[fiver]

When I worked for a prepaid Mastercard company, I helped write a web interface to allow purchasing one of our prepaid cards with a customer's Mastercard or Visa (yes I know this seems backwards to me too).

We used Mastercard's SECURECODE feature to help us verify that credit cards used were legit. Basically, a customer has to register their card to use this service which allows them to set up a PIN associated with their card number - during checkout, they get asked for this number - the verification is then passed to the Mastercard processor.

WITHOUT this kind of due diligence, Mastercard is not very willing to eat the fraudulent charges.

PROBLEM: You lose a LOT of sales because people can't commit fraud as easily or the banks that issue their credit cards don't support this feature and the merchant has to decide whether to take the risk of fraud and accept it anyway.

Even with a security feature like this, we still got a LOT of attempted fraud on our web site (it's pretty easy to tell that dozens of $200 transactions at 3 am are probably NOT legit esp. when they come from 3 or 4 different numbers). Obama would have to be crazy to take the risks associated with deliberately turning off security features like address verification (and yes, the programming interface available to the site programmers is completely customizable).

The other option of course is people who use GIFT CARDS. Gift cards that have VISA/MC logos do require a name and I believe they still require an SSN for OFAC checking. However, they DON'T require addresses to be collected so name/address verification really isn't possible with those kinds of payment mechanisms.

Of course, I try to make sure a merchant is fairly reputable before I risk giving them my credit card information anyway - that pretty much leaves any politican's site out of the running.

Michael

 

[Fisher]

Northland Couple Warns of Political Credit Card Fraud

Fair use
http://www.myfoxkc.com/myfox/pages/...n=1&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=TSTY&pageId=3.2.1

Excerpt

NORTH KANSAS CITY, MO. -- A North Kansas City couple has been left scratching their heads after they became the victims of a political scam.

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.

 

[Wardogs]

this problem was discussed the other day on fox news

when people called to complain they were asked to allow the charges to remain and not complain.
and not seek reimbursement.


and early redistribution of the wealth ?

Blue, that was something different.

The Fox story concerned unauthorized charges made to the credit cards of registered Republicans apparently by a third party not provably associated with the Obama campaign.

This one concerns the thousands of "small donations" that have been coming in for Obama.
Legally, donations under $200 don't have to be Identified to the FEC.
McCain has taken the step of publishing ALL his contributions, even the smaller ones, even though he was technically not required to do so.

Obama has not only rejected McCains challenge to do the same, he has been found to have over $230 mil dollars in questionable donations from fake addresses, ficticious names and illegal foreign residents.

Hillary had a similar scandal with Norman Hsu who raised over $40 mill for her by funneling money through illegal immigrants, restaurant employees, etc, most of which were in Chinatown.

Very similar denials went on from her camp also.

"I can tell you with 100 certainty that Norman Hsu is NOT involved in a ponzi scheme," wrote Samantha Wolf, who was a campaign finance director for the Western states."He is COMPLETELY legit."

In fact, Hsu was a fugitive wanted on a 15-year-old bench warrant stemming from an early 1990s investment fraud case. He is now in prison.

Obama has never been called to task even for his known violations like the Gazan brothers. His campaign said the money was returned, but they said they never received it.

Same with Rezko. Information had to be pried from Obama and his original figure of $75,000 he said he got from him has since risen to over $250,000.
It supposedly was donated to charity, but it was never confirmed that that happened.

This new scam is a bit different, almost like they learned from past mistakes. By not keeping records, not matching information, it leaves no trail to follow and impossible to document overseas transactions.

He gets a complete pass from the press, even on the ones that CAN be documented. No one cares.

This is the same guy who began his campaign promising an "open and new" type of politics and agreeing that he would only use public funding...
wardogs

 

[Mark Armstrong]

A member of this message board, rmomaha, reported back on August 8th that two payments to Obama for President were charged to his American Express Business Card, one for $2300, the other for $4600:

http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?t=297072

LoupGarou was of the opinion that scam artists were using Obama's campaign as a cover. I'm not so quick to dismiss Obama's campaign from suspicion. Obama's campaign is rolling in money, the origin of which is not clearly documented.

I find it interesting that the Larmans were fraudulently billed the same amount--$2300.

 

[blueridge]

This could be a huge story!

Even so, it'll likely never see the light of day in the media - which is almost solidly in the can for the Messiah.


Also, as in the good Marxist tradition - none of this matters since the ends justify the means.

 

[Rearden Steel]

A member of this message board, rmomaha, reported back on August 8th that two payments to Obama for President were charged to his American Express Business Card, one for $2300, the other for $4600:

Well let's see. Thats $6900 to Obama. Clearly above the $2300 limit for campaign contributions. He will probably be arrested soon.....

 

[Wardogs]

A member of this message board, rmomaha, reported back on August 8th that two payments to Obama for President were charged to his American Express Business Card, one for $2300, the other for $4600:

http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?t=297072

LoupGarou was of the opinion that scam artists were using Obama's campaign as a cover. I'm not so quick to dismiss Obama's campaign from suspicion. Obama's campaign is rolling in money, the origin of which is not clearly documented.

I find it interesting that the Larmans were fraudulently billed the same amount--$2300.

I'm not convinced either Mark. The ones that DO make it into print are just the tip of the iceberg. The FEC who is conducting an investigation, says it may take several years to track down all the questionable donations. They estimate a total of as much as half of the $426 million in those being investigated may be illegal/foreign/phony.

Keep in mind Biden's decades long involvement with the Delaware banking/credit card lobby.

National Review reports:


Obama's Funny Money, or Who's "Loving" "You," Barry? [Andy McCarthy]
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YmZkNDAwY2I0ZTNjNGNlYWRkNmUwZjRjYTg1ZGU0MWM=

Mr. "Good Will," apparently.

My pal Diana West points me to Ken Timmerman's must-read Newsmax column — which naturally is getting no coverage in the MSM — about Sen. Obama's eye-popping fundraising operation. Bottom line: the would-be President of the World is raising goo-gobs of money from foreigners outside the United States (a violation of federal law), and matching goo-gobs of money inside the United States from phantoms who are blowing out the individual contribution limits by, among other devices, making up identies and breaking up contributions in amounts less than $200, for which reporting requirements are less rigorous.

According to Ken, the Obama campaign has raised nearly half a billion dollars ($429.6M) but refuses to provide the names of most of the donors. Election law requires the campaign to track this information but not for it to disclose the names of those who donate less than $200, which is most Obama donors. (Sen. McCain discloses the names of all donors.) The Obama campaign has raised millions upon millions of dollars from outside the United States. Only Americans living overseas may lawfully contribute, but because the Obama vetting machinery is negligent (or worse), the probability is that enormous sums are coming from foreigners. The campaign knows the FEC is a lethargic agency and won't have a full accounting until perhaps years after the election.

This typifies the domestic fundraising issue:

In a letter dated June 25, 2008, the FEC asked the Obama campaign to verify a series of $25 donations from a contributor identified as “Will, Good” from Austin, Texas. Mr. Good Will listed his employer as “Loving” and his profession as “You.”

A Newsmax analysis of the 1.4 million individual contributions in the latest master file for the Obama campaign discovered 1,000 separate entries for Mr. Good Will, most of them for $25. In total, Mr. Good Will gave $17,375.

Following this and subsequent FEC requests, campaign records show that 330 contributions from Mr. Good Will were credited back to a credit card. But the most recent report, filed on Sept. 20, showed a net cumulative balance of $8,950 — still well over the $4,600 limit.

There can be no doubt that the Obama campaign noticed these contributions, since Obama’s Sept. 20 report specified that Good Will’s cumulative contributions since the beginning of the campaign were $9,375.

In an e-mailed response to a query from Newsmax, Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt pledged that the campaign would return the donations. But given the slowness with which the campaign has responded to earlier FEC queries, there’s no guarantee that the money will be returned before the Nov. 4 election.

Similarly, a donor identified as “Pro, Doodad,” from “Nando, NY,” gave $19,500 in 786 separate donations, most of them for $25. For most of these donations, Mr. Doodad Pro listed his employer as “Loving” and his profession as “You,” just as Good Will had done. But in some of them, he didn’t even go this far, apparently picking letters at random to fill in the blanks on the credit card donation form. In these cases, he said he was employed by “VCX” and that his profession was “VCVC.”

Following FEC requests, the Obama campaign began refunding money to Doodad Pro in February 2008. In all, about $8,425 was charged back to a credit card. But that still left a net total of $11,165 as of Sept. 20, way over the individual limit of $4,600. Here again, LaBolt pledged that the contributions would be returned but gave no date.

In February, after just 93 donations, Doodad Pro had already gone over the $2,300 limit for the primary. He was over the $4,600 limit for the general election one month later. In response to FEC complaints, the Obama campaign began refunding money to Doodad Pro even before he reached these limits. But his credit card was the gift that kept on giving. His most recent un-refunded contributions were on July 7, when he made 14 separate donations, apparently by credit card, of $25 each.

Just as with Mr. Good Will, there can be no doubt that the Obama campaign noticed the contributions, since its Sept. 20 report specified that Doodad’s cumulative contributions since the beginning of the campaign were $10,965.

Bear in mind that we only know about Messrs. "Good Will" and "Doodad Pro" because someone detected that they went over $200 in aggregate contributions. If more clever Obama supporters have given thousands of dollars to Obama by structuring it in a variety of different phony names and amounts under $200, we might not learn about that for years ... if ever.

And then there is the foreign money. A sampling from Ken — though all of it should be read (italics are mine):

The FEC has compiled a separate database of potentially questionable overseas donations that contains more than 11,500 contributions totaling $33.8 million. More than 520 listed their “state” as “IR,” often an abbreviation for Iran. Another 63 listed it as “UK,” the United Kingdom.

More than 1,400 of the overseas entries clearly were U.S. diplomats or military personnel, who gave an APO address overseas. Their total contributions came to just $201,680. But others came from places as far afield as Abu Dhabi, Addis Ababa, Beijing, Fallujah, Florence, Italy, and a wide selection of towns and cities in France.

Until recently, the Obama Web site allowed a contributor to select the country where he resided from the entire membership of the United Nations, including such friendly places as North Korea and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Unlike McCain’s or Sen. Hillary Clinton’s online donation pages, the Obama site did not ask for proof of citizenship until just recently....
In July and August, the head of the Nigeria’s stock market held a series of pro-Obama fundraisers in Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city. The events attracted local Nigerian business owners. At one event, a table for eight at one fundraising dinner went for $16,800. Nigerian press reports claimed sponsors raked in an estimated $900,000. The sponsors said the fundraisers were held to help Nigerians attend the Democratic convention in Denver. But the Nigerian press expressed skepticism of that claim, and the Nigerian public anti-fraud commission is now investigating the matter.

In June, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi gave a public speech praising Obama, claiming foreign nationals were donating to his campaign. “All the people in the Arab and Islamic world and in Africa applauded this man,” the Libyan leader said. “They welcomed him and prayed for him and for his success, and they may have even been involved in legitimate contribution campaigns to enable him to win the American presidency..."

[O]n July 31 that donors from the Gaza strip had contributed $33,000 to the Obama campaign through bulk purchases of T-shirts they had shipped to Gaza.... A pair of Palestinian brothers named Hosam and Monir Edwan contributed more than $31,300 to the Obama campaign in October and November 2007, FEC records show. Their largesse attracted the attention of the FEC almost immediately. In an April 15, 2008, report that examined the Obama campaign’s year-end figures for 2007, the FEC asked that some of these contributions be reassigned. The Obama camp complied sluggishly, prompting a more detailed admonishment form the FEC on July 30. The Edwan brothers listed their address as “GA,” as in Georgia, although they entered “Gaza” or “Rafah Refugee camp” as their city of residence on most of the online contribution forms.... The latest Obama campaign filing shows that $891.11 still has not been refunded to the Edwan brothers, despite repeated FEC warnings and campaign claims that all the money was refunded in December.

A Newsmax review of the Obama campaign finance filings found that the FEC had asked for the redesignation or refund of 53,828 donations, totaling just under $30 million.

But none involves the donors who never appear in the Obama campaign reports, which the [Center for Responsive Politics] estimates at nearly half the $426.8 million the Obama campaign has raised to date.
**********************

That last statement is important....
The funds in question in that report DO NOT INCLUDE the under $200 donations....
wardogs

 

[NC Susan]

This could be a huge story!

Sure, if we had honest to goodness real live news REPORTERS instead of indoctrination spreaders.........

 

[Wardogs]

Other sites and private people are starting to pick up on this .

Some are "testing" the claims of no verification for domestic and FOREIGN donations with the results below....
wardogs

“John Galt” donating to Obama this year too, apparently; Update: RNC files new complaint with FEC; Update: Foreign credit cards being accepted too? Update: Ruffini cries fraud
posted at 12:50 pm on October 23, 2008 by Allahpundit
http://hotair.com/archives/2008/10/23/john-galt-donating-to-obama-this-year-too-apparently/

I’m ripping the content straight from Powerline. Ace actually had the story last night, but it was only a single source; PL claims in an update that other readers have replicated the experiment. Quote:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2008/10/021856.php

I went to the Obama campaign website and entered the following:

Name: John Galt
Address: 1957 Ayn Rand Lane
City: Galts Gulch
State: CO
Zip: 99999

Then I checked the box next to $15 and entered my actual credit card number and expiration date (it didn’t ask for the 3-didgit code on the back of the card) and it took me to the next page and… “Your donation has been processed. Thank you for your generous gift.”

This simply should not, and could not, happen in any business or any campaign that is honestly trying to vet it’s donors. Also, I don’t see how this could possibly happen without the collusion of the credit card companies. They simply wouldn’t allow any business to process, potentially, hundreds of millions in credit card transactions where the name on the card doesn’t match the purchasers name.

In short, with the system set up as it is by the Obama camp, an individual could donate unlimited amounts of money by simply making up fake names and addresses. And Obama is doing his best to facilitate this fraud. This is truly scandalous.

The same guy claims to have tried to donate the same way on McCain’s website and had his card rejected. I’m skeptical that The One would be quite this blatant about things, but (a) at the Corner, Mark Steyn notes that the only way to get his own online merchandising vendor to bypass a name check when processing credit card information would be to modify certain security settings, and (b) this wouldn’t be the first time Team Barry’s website had dragged its feet on online donation security measures. From Ken Timmerman’s much-linked piece at Newsmax last month: “Unlike McCain’s or Sen. Hillary Clinton’s online donation pages, the Obama site did not ask for proof of citizenship until just recently. Clinton’s presidential campaign required U.S. citizens living abroad to actually fax a copy of their passport before a donation would be accepted.” Meanwhile, in response to his earlier post on this, Geraghty receives this e-mail from an Obama supporter:

Back in August or September (not sure which) Obama’s site definitely would not take my money because I was entering my school address instead of my permanent (parent’s) one. I remember being slightly annoyed at the time. I just tried it to donate again using my school address and it went through no problem. That’s more than a bit disappointing.

Hopefully, the suspect funds will be returned. Almost 2 million was refunded just last month.

There’s definitely no excuse for this though.

Any readers willing and able to help confirm or debunk? Knowledge of online vending a plus! Also a plus: Tolerance for being called a hater or racist for questioning the security measures of a guy who famously hasn’t released any information about his many, many, many small donors. If you succeed, your reward will be watching the media pounce on this story — to find out who “John Galt” is, so that they can give him a beating Joe-the-Plumber-style.

Update: A reader tells Steyn that his donation as “JarackBoe BOamabiden” was accepted.

Update: Lots more info at Ace’s from readers who are replicating the experiment. Question: Is it possible that the website’s showing a “transaction confirmed” message before the transaction’s actually confirmed, and all these donations are being rejected later?

Update: Reader “Dale in Atlanta” says he tried it with a fake name and the transaction showed up on his credit card immediately — but marked “pending.” We’ll find out later today if it clears.

Update: Just across from the RNC:

The Republican National Committee (RNC) today filed a supplement to its complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) against the Obama for America campaign addressing its acceptance of foreign national and excessive contributions, donations from unknown sources, and demonstrated lack of oversight or concern for compliance with the law. The complaint demonstrates that the Obama campaign has failed to comply with federal campaign finance law in its fundraising. RNC Chief Counsel Sean Cairncross released the following statement today concerning the supplement to the complaint:

“Based on numerous press accounts that have come to light since our initial filing in early October, it is clear that the Obama for America campaign is operating outside of the law. The complete and total lack of any control mechanisms within the Obama campaign’s fundraising operation has undermined any confidence in their ability to curtail excessive, foreign, and fraudulent contributions and demands immediate attention from the Federal Election Commission (FEC).”

Update: Here’s something a reader sent me, for what it’s worth:

I recently set up credit card processing for my startup company and the way it works is the vendor (ie me, or Obama’s campaign) selects whether the info must match what is on the card. If they opt not to they accept the risk of being flagged after too many fradulent charges are reported by them to the credit card companies. Since these people are (presumably) using their actual credit card and just giving a different name to avoid the donation limits I doubt they’ll file complaints about the charges with their card company.

So the only time you would ever do this is if you know your clients really well. The only reason I can think of for Obama’s campaign to do this is to avoid the donations cap. The fact that this isn’t all over the media is truly a shame.

Update: Unbelievable. Suddenly, after multiple blog readers had their phony donations accepted and this story started percolating on right-wing blogs, the security system is magically back in place.

Update: I don’t know what happened to the guy in the last update but Flip says he successfully donated five bucks at 2:05 p.m. with the following info:

Name: Nodda Realperson
Address: 1000 This Is a Bogus Street
City/State: Neighborhood of Makebelieve, CA
Email: if.a.live.person.is.vetting.this.donation@its.fake.dont.process.it.com
Employer: Barack Obama
Occupation: Cow-Eyed Disciple

A friend e-mails to ask if anyone’s tried this with a foreign credit card to see if there’s any difference. Anyone got one?

Update: Commenter “Bombast” says his foreign credit card worked like a charm:

I have a credit card issued by a bank in Hong Kong.

I’ve just made 5 donations of $5 each using the card. I listed fake addresses in North Korea, Iran, Gaza, Venezuela and Kenya. The names and addresses were made up, each was different, I listed real Yahoo email addresses that forward to me.

Fake Name
Not A. Realperson
Finance Violation
Fraudulent Charge
Over Donation Limit

All 5 went through without a problem. I’m already being solicited for more money.

Update: One of Jonah Goldberg’s readers says he tried this at McCain’s website and was rejected.

Update: Patrick Ruffini was Bush’s web guy in 2004 and specializes in online campaign finance, so he knows what he’s talking about here. Verdict: 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…

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.

 

[Wardogs]

The Obama campaign's assertions that this was a temporary "glitch" are bogus... (surprise, surprise..)

And still not a word from the Media other than the one noted in the article...about the McCain campaign...
wardogs

Obama Camp Continues Mega-Million$$$ Campaign Donation Fraud-- Door Still Open!
http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2008/10/obama-camp-continues-mega-million.html#links

While the American media continues to focus on what Sarah Palin is wearing the Barack Obama Campaign continues to pull off the largest campaign donation fraud in history.

By turning off their Address Verification System, or AVS, at the Obama website, the Democratic candidate was able to raise a record $150 million in donations last month from millions of donors from all over the world.

Here's more proof that the Obama Camp is still cheating and accepting donations from anyone anywhere in the world!

This just came in the mailbox:

Rezko Donation Entered at Obama Campaign website:

Jim,

It took a few days to confirm, but as of this morning all four charges have posted to my CC account (see attached). Remember, these were all separate donations made by:

John Galt
Saddam Hussein
Osama Bin Laden
Bill Ayers

And I have the screenshots to prove it. Also, I made another attempt this morning to make a $10 donation under the name Tony Rezko (See attached.) And it went thru again. So reports that this has been fixed are erroneous.

Further, last night on Sheppard Smith’s 3pm-ET show this issue was brought up briefly and they cited the Obama campaign falsely claiming that this sort of thing happens at the McCain site and that they catch these errors later in the processing. Well, it took three days to process my donations and they all skated through their rigorous screening.

Rezko Donation Accepted by Obama Campaign:

Rezko Donation Charged to Credit Card:

Power Line has more on Obama's massive fraud.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2008/10/021881.php

Here's more from C.--

It’s clear to me that Obama has a sophisticated system that could easily flag and reject these donations if they wished to do so. The fact that only one of my donations showed up on my CC statement within the first 24-hrs initially gave me pause that they were screening for fraud (even though I gave a completely fake address that didn’t match my card). However, when the other three donations showed up three days later, it only confirmed my worst suspicions.

A major part of what I do is analyze and digest website traffic statistics on individual websites and sort thru in the most miniscule of detail; new visitors, browser type, sales transactions, email addresses etc. This is WebStuff 101. And even the most basic Web-Analytics and database tools would allow Obama to reject these phony donations before they occur, as the McCain site does.

Further, it’s laughable that the Obama camp claim it’s too complicated to make their under-$200 donor information available. Again, even the most basic Web-Analytics and database tools would allow the Obama camp to make this info available the way McCain does. This openness, on McCain’s part, enabled the AP to finally find something worthy of reporting on the issue:

“The McCain Campaign website also lists 23 anonymous contributions in excess of fifty dollars, despite the legal requirement to maintain the name and address of each contributor any amount in excess of $50, and dozens of additional donors who provided incomplete information.”

The info is easily available if you try. But Obama isn’t trying, and in fact has enabled the fraud to occur. This is a clear case of facilitation of fraud. As others have reported:

“I]n order to accept donations from "Della Ware" and "Saddam Hussein" et al, the Obama website had, intentionally, to disable all the default security settings on their credit-card processing. I took a look at the inner sanctum of my (alas, far more modest) online retail operation this afternoon and, in order to permit fraud as easy as that which the Obama campaign is facilitating, you have to uncheck every single box on the AVS system, each one of which makes it very explicit just what you're doing - ie, accepting transactions with no "billing address", no "street address" match, no "zip code" match, with a bank "of non-US origin" (I've got nothing against those, but a US campaign fundraiser surely should be wary), etc. When you've disabled the whole lot one step at a time, then you've got a system tailor-made for fake names and bogus addresses.”

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

This guy sums it up pretty well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKqCrHsNBJw

(he has a bunch of videos, all worth watching).

HD

 

[Lilbitsnana]

So, all of these people are donating to the O-man to prove a point? Or do they have a way of getting their money back and removed from his campaing coffers? Maybe I missed that part..

 

[Wardogs]

This guy sums it up pretty well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKqCrHsNBJw

(he has a bunch of videos, all worth watching).

HD

That was classic.

I love a calm reasoned discussion...

 

[Wardogs]

So, all of these people are donating to the O-man to prove a point? Or do they have a way of getting their money back and removed from his campaing coffers? Maybe I missed that part..

Many of them thought they would be rejected, but no such luck.

The starters of these "tests" are now telling folks to stop, or give only $1-5 so as not to add even more to the pile...

wardogs

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

That was classic.

I love a calm reasoned discussion...

He cracks me up, he's like Howard Beale on steroids. The thing is, he hits the nail right on the head in each one of his videos. Straight talker, sums up the issue in about 2 minutes. His economic videos are priceless.

Here's his main page on youtube, he usually does a new video every day or two

http://www.youtube.com/user/drinkingwithbob

He's got the issues down so pat, I wonder if he's a member here at TB

HD

 

[pixmo]

The Washington Post picked it up....

Campaign Finance Gets New Scrutiny
Obama's Take Raises Questions About Web

Sen. Barack Obama's record-breaking $150 million fundraising performance in September has for the first time prompted questions about whether presidential candidates should be permitted to collect huge sums of money through faceless credit card transactions over the Internet.

Lawyers for both the Republican and Democratic parties have asked the Federal Election Commission to examine the issue, pointing to dozens of examples of what they say are lax screening procedures by the presidential campaigns that permitted donors using false names or stolen credit cards to make contributions.

"There is so much money coming in and yet very little ability to say with certainty that you know who is giving it," said Sean Cairncross, the Republican National Committee's chief counsel.

While the potentially fraudulent or excessive contributions represent about 1 percent of Obama's staggering haul, the security challenge is one of several major campaign-finance-related questions raised by the Democrat's fundraising juggernaut.

Concerns about anonymous donations seeping into the campaign began to surface last month, mainly on conservative blogs. Some bloggers described their own attempts to display the flaws in Obama's fundraising program, donating under such obviously phony names as Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, and reported that the credit card transactions were permitted.

Obama officials said it should be obvious that it is as much in their campaign's interest as it is in the public's interest for fake contributions to be turned back, and said they have taken pains to establish a barrier to prevent them. Over the course of the campaign, they said, a number of additional safeguards have been added to bulk up the security of their system.

In a paper outlining those safeguards, provided to The Washington Post, the campaign said it runs twice-daily sweeps of new donations, looking for irregularities. Flagged contributions are manually reviewed by a team of lawyers, then cleared or refunded. Reports of misused credit cards lead to immediate refunds.

In September, according to the campaign, $1.8 million in online contributions was flagged, and $353,000 was refunded. Of the contributions flagged because a foreign address or bank account was involved, 94.1 percent were found to be proper. One-tenth of one percent were marked for refund, and 5.77 percent are still being vetted.

But clearly invented names have been used often enough to provoke an outcry from Republican critics. Donors to the Obama campaign using false names such as Doodad Pro and Good Will gave $17,375 through 1,000 separate donations, with no sign that they immediately tripped alarms at the campaign. Of more concern, Cairncross said, are reports that the campaign permitted money from 123 foreign nationals to enter its accounts.

Obama officials said they have identified similar irregularities in the finance records of their Republican rival, Sen. John McCain. "Every campaign faces these challenges -- John McCain's campaign has refunded more than $1.2 million in contributions from anonymous, excessive and fraudulent contributors -- and we have reviewed and strengthened our procedures to ensure that the contributions the campaign accepts are appropriate," said Ben LaBolt, an Obama spokesman.

McCain's contributor database shows at least 201 donations from individuals listing themselves as "anonymous" or "anonymous anonymous," according to Obama's campaign. In one particularly embarrassing episode, the McCain campaign mistakenly sent a fundraising solicitation to the Russian ambassador to the United Nations.

Rather than relying primarily on a network of wealthy and well-connected bundlers -- as candidates have since President Bush pioneered that technique in 2000 -- Obama also tapped a list of 3 million ordinary donors, many of whom who gave in increments of $25 and $50.

Obama's success with these kitchen-table contributors has set up one of the most lopsided financial advantages in modern presidential campaigning. During the first two weeks of October, Obama spent four times more than McCain, including for an unprecedented $82 million saturation-advertising campaign that blanketed the airwaves in key battleground states.

Campaign finance experts have already classified this contest as one of the transformational elections that will dramatically change the way politicians pay for campaigns in coming cycles.

"It's the model of the future," said Rick Hasen, an election law specialist at Loyola Law School. "Gone will be the $2,300-a-plate dinner. That will be replaced by the $30,000-a-plate dinner, the kind of select event Obama had hosted by folks like Warren Buffett. And the rest will be the micro-donors -- entirely Internet-based."

Hasen said the 2008 campaign is a mirror of other races that led to major shifts in fundraising. The Watergate scandal of 1972 led Congress to create a public financing system for presidential bids. Ronald Reagan harnessed the power of direct-mail solicitation in 1980. In 1996, political parties opened the door to runaway donations in the form of unregulated "soft money."

One immediate result of Obama's fundraising showing this fall is that it may render obsolete the current system of public financing for presidential campaigns. Because McCain opted into the system, he was limited to spending the $84.1 million provided to his campaign by the Treasury once he claimed the GOP nomination. Obama, who chose to remain outside the system after initially suggesting that he would participate in it, is expected to raise and spend at least three times that amount in the general election campaign.

Obama's advantage, said FEC Chairman Donald F. McGahn II, makes it likely that Congress will rethink whether the program still makes sense.

To many, Obama's fundraising success is good news -- it shows that a White House bid can be financed largely without donors who have ulterior motives or agendas, and diminishes the role of the special interests and large institutional givers that were once the backbone of presidential fundraising.

"When you have that many contributors," McGahn said, "it does in a weird way cleanse the system."

Bradley A. Smith, a former FEC chairman, in an essay in today's Outlook section of The Post, agreed that Obama's effort would "put to rest all the shibboleths about campaign finance reform -- that it is needed to prevent corruption, that it equalizes the playing field, or that tax subsidies are needed to prevent corruption."

There are already signs that runaway fundraising efforts built on small donors have the potential to create an entirely new set of problems.

Scott Thomas, another former FEC chairman, said the potential for these types of security breaches has been looming for more than a decade, since the commission first allowed donors to use a credit card when making a contribution.

"The problem itself has been lurking," Thomas said. "What's changed is the sheer volume of donations. At some point that causes enough of a clog that campaigns cannot do all of the vetting and research that would be necessary to figure out if they're looking at a real name."

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.

"Maybe the answer is to revisit [those disclosure thresholds], given that the levels were put in in the '70s, long before the Internet," McGahn said. "This may bring it to the fore."


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/25/AR2008102502302.html?hpid=topnews

 

[Wardogs]

The Washington Post picked it up....

Wow, what a whitewash...

"Obama officials said they have identified similar irregularities in the finance records of their Republican rival, Sen. John McCain. "Every campaign faces these challenges -- John McCain's campaign has refunded more than $1.2 million in contributions from anonymous, excessive and fraudulent contributors -- and we have reviewed and strengthened our procedures to ensure that the contributions the campaign accepts are appropriate," said Ben LaBolt, an Obama spokesman. "

They fail to point out that it was the McCain campaign itself that flagged these donations and that the only reason anyone else knows about them is that McCain publishes ALL donations, even those under $200 on their website. Something that Obama refuses to do.

LaBolt's claim that "we have reviewed and strengthened our procedures to ensure that the contributions the campaign accepts are appropriate," is utter BS as shown in the previous posts.

Over $200 million is suspect and there is no way to check even what money came from foreign donations or multiple donors.

When they accept contributions from donors with names like:

Fake Name
Not A. Realperson
Finance Violation
Fraudulent Charge
Over Donation Limit
Tony Rezko

LaBolt's assurances ring a bit hollow.

wardogs

 

[pixmo]

Wow, what a whitewash...

wardogs

Yep, they picked it up, but did the usual spin it.

 

[Wardogs]

Yep, they picked it up, but did the usual spin it.

I'm surprised that they did that much...

There is still a huge “don’t look over here” by the Post trying to protect The One. They use the tried and true, “Both parties do it, so we need a bipartisan approach to fix it,” which is a crock, in light of the fact that McCain’s campaign (and Hillary’s, for that matter) caught essentially all of the phony stuff with the existing credit card fraud prevention programs.

And while they rough up Obama a bit, there is no discussion of the fact that the Obama campaign had to deliberately disable all of the fraud protection in order to accept all these phony donations.

While the potentially fraudulent or excessive contributions represent almost 50% percent of Obama’s staggering haul, the security challenge is one of several major campaign-finance-related questions raised by the Democrat’s fundraising juggernaut. . . .

Joe Biden has been in bed with the CC Companies for decades. A good place to start an investigation IMHO...

Obama officials said it should be obvious that it is as much in their campaign’s interest as it is in the public’s interest for fake contributions to be turned back [biggest lie ever], and said they have taken pains to establish a barrier to prevent them. Over the course of the campaign, they said, a number of additional safeguards have been added to bulk up the security of their system. Oh really? Where? Another blatant lie.

In a paper outlining those safeguards, provided to The Washington Post, the campaign said it runs twice-daily sweeps of new donations, looking for irregularities. Flagged contributions are manually reviewed by a team of lawyers, then cleared or refunded. Reports of misused credit cards lead to immediate refunds. This has been shown to be utter bull. The conservative blogs started picking up on this in mid-September and testing the system. Not one dime from the fraudulent names they used has been returned...

Not a dime...

The thugs in the Obama camp know that campaign finance irregularities are never investigated until after the election is over. The message to Chicago politicians is crystal clear: Cheat and lie as much as you can, raise as much money from any source to win the thing, and we will have it “investigated” once our guy is the President.
wardogs

 

[NC Susan]

This could be a huge story!

except its only playing out in the internet bloggasphere and am radio, and most Americans only get their news from one source - MSM newspapers and television.......

 

[Oilpatch Hand]

I went to the Obama campaign website and entered the following:

Name: John Galt
Address: 1957 Ayn Rand Lane
City: Galts Gulch
State: CO
Zip: 99999

Then I checked the box next to $15 and entered my actual credit card number and expiration date (it didn’t ask for the 3-didgit code on the back of the card) and it took me to the next page and… “Your donation has been processed. Thank you for your generous gift.”

This simply should not, and could not, happen in any business or any campaign that is honestly trying to vet it’s donors. Also, I don’t see how this could possibly happen without the collusion of the credit card companies. They simply wouldn’t allow any business to process, potentially, hundreds of millions in credit card transactions where the name on the card doesn’t match the purchasers name.

In short, with the system set up as it is by the Obama camp, an individual could donate unlimited amounts of money by simply making up fake names and addresses. And Obama is doing his best to facilitate this fraud. This is truly scandalous.

Buraq Hussein Obama isn't running a political campaign anymore.

It's now merely a credit card scam boiler room operation, and a poorly disguised one, at that.

 

[Laurane]

Who gets all the money when Barry loses? Does he get to take it all home to Illinois with him. Or does he turn it all over to the DNC??

The bookeeping might be horrendous, but the profits might be worth the hassle.

 

[G-Man]

PBS news hour with Jim Lehrer was going on and on about how much Obama had collected about $150 MILLION dollars in September alone! Mostly from internet donations (which means credit cards) this could sure explain the reason.....

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

Dennis started a thread on MAIN on this topic which I've also updated.

http://hotair.com/archives/2008/10/29/credit-card-experts-explain-the-extent-of-obamas-deception/
(fair use applies) (Emphasis not mine - from original article)

Credit-card experts explain the extent of Obama’s deception
posted at 1:12 pm on October 29, 2008 by Ed Morrissey

After writing twice about the deliberate decision by the Barack Obama campaign to avoid validation checks on credit-card contributions, I’ve heard from a number of people in the credit-card industry on how this works. Two explanations in particular explain the depth of deliberation and deception involved in disregarding address and security-code verification. The first explains that Team Obama probably didn’t just opt out of using these verification processes, but more likely rewrote the code on their site to bypass them, emphases mine:

I have over 30 years of experience in investigating Credit Card Fraud and I can tell you, which you may or may not know, that the merchant acquirer that is conducting the collection of credit / debit card for the Obama campaign are responsible for the actions to be taken regarding the Address Verification System responses. The value of the AVS system is that the issuer of the card being used provides back to the merchant acquirer a response based upon the information provided during the authorization process. This response indicates to the merchant acquirer if the card information was validated as to ownership of the account. It is the merchant acquirer that determines what to do when the authorization response is received. In most cases the transaction that comes back with any negative meaning is denied. However, if the merchant acquirer has adjusted their system to accept any response as acceptable the transaction would be completed.

The value of the AVS system is to deny Card Not Present transactions (CNP) which are suspicious. This protects the merchant against charge backs for bad transactions. What is interesting to me is that the merchant acquirer has knowingly violated a basic CNP fraud prevention technique to accommodate a merchant (Obama Campaign). I think that both the Associations (VISA & MasterCard) would be highly interested in looking at the merchant acquirer that was processing these transactions. The value of ignoring the AVS responses is that multiple invalid transactions may be made without fear of being rejected by the authorization systems. This means that the real owner of the credit card account is willing to allow multiple transactions to be made on the account using different names and addresses that under normal conditions would be denied. The merchant acquirer has a complete listing of all transactions done and it would be very interesting to see how many transactions were conducted on the same account number using different names. I would think that this would be a Federal violation under the current campaign funding laws.

Another fraud-prevention veteran notes that Team Obama has at the least provided a testing ground for thieves looking to validate responses:

You may have mentioned this elsewhere, but disabling the security allows would be credit card thieves to “ping” numbers till they get a hit. The number of “pings” should have raised flags at Visa and MasterCard, don’t you think?

I wonder if they warned the Obama campaign, or worse, ignored it.

In other words, a crook could simply type in random numbers until he found one sequence that worked in some fashion. That could give a thief a starting point for committing credit-card fraud. If all they had to do was type nonsense values for names and addresses, such as Doodad Pro, they could quickly determine which numbers were valid — and they could probably program bots to do that kind of work.

Thanks to Team Obama, millions of people now have to wonder whether they’ve been victimized by credit thieves. Some of us wonder if the thieves aren’t really working at Team Obama in the first place.

 

[Wardogs]

Massive Fund Raising Misdeeds Prove Obama is Bought, But Who owns Him?
http://familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.1527/pub_detail.asp
Paul Hollrah

In a July 25 column titled "Who Owns Barack Obama?" we discussed Obama's phenomenal fundraising juggernaut.

In July, Obama boasted that, as of May 31, his contributor base numbered some 1.5 million people, with one-fourth, or $66.25 million of his $265 million, coming from those contributing $2,000, or more... some 33,200 people. Thus, the remainder, or $198.75 million, came from some 1.47 million people, each contributing $5, $10, $20... or, as Obama assured us, "whatever they could afford."

While it is true that Obama is the kind of guy who could read Bill Clinton's golf scorecard and make it sound convincing, simple arithmetic should have told him that $198.75 million dollars cannot be contributed by 1.47 million people in "$5, $10, or $20" amounts. Each of those 1.47 million people would have had to contribute, on average, $135 to create a pool of $198.75 million... and that simply does not happen. It has never happened before in American politics and it is not happening now.

But now, just days before the election, the Obama campaign has compounded their sins. They are now reporting that their contributor base has increased from 1.5 million to 2.5 million and that the total amount raised now approaches $600 million. If we can assume that 25% of their contributions still come from individuals giving $2,000 to $2,300, that base has now grown from 33,200 individuals to 65,000 in a time span of just three months, and the number of individuals contributing modest amounts... "$5, $10, $20, or whatever they could afford"... is now up from 1.47 million to 2.43 million, each contributing, on average, $185.

Anyone who believes that is actually happening will believe almost anything. So how are they doing it?

In our July 25 column we pointed out that UBS Americas, headed by Robert Wolf... along with George Soros, one of Obama's top two money men... had been accused of highly unethical and illegal banking practices in six months of hearings by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. According to an article in The Nation, UBS Americas, a subsidiary of UBS, of Zurich, Switzerland, has advised wealthy Americans, including many of our worst villains, how to shelter funds from the IRS, as well as from prosecutors, creditors, disgruntled business associates, family members, and each other.

In a Statement of Facts in the recent criminal trial of former UBS executive Bradley Birkenfeld, it was alleged that UBS took extraordinary steps to help American clients manage their Swiss accounts without alerting federal authorities. For example, UBS advised American clients to avoid detection by using Swiss credit cards to withdraw funds, to destroy all existing off-shore banking records, and to misrepresent the receipt of funds from their Swiss accounts as loans from the Swiss bank. According to The Nation, UBS established an elaborate training program which taught bank employees how to avoid surveillance by U.S. Customs and law enforcement, falsify visas, encrypt communications, and secretly move money in and out of the country... "

It is the perfect instrument for funneling illegal campaign contributions into the coffers of an unscrupulous American politician. Putting two and two together, I suggested that a very wealthy individual, or cartel, wishing to influence the election of the President of the United States, could transfer unlimited sums of money through this device. A U.S. recipient, such as the Obama campaign, could receive hundreds of thousands of individual contributions via Swiss credit card transfers, with fictitious payees being entered by teams of paid staffers working in a "boiler room" setting. The owners of the Swiss accounts would receive periodic statements indicating: a) debits of varying amounts, up to $2,300 each, and b) offsetting credits provided by the cartel, or by the wealthy, but unnamed, "international financier."

For most of the super wealthy, especially those attempting to hide income and assets from U.S. authorities, an unexplained debit and credit of $2,300, or less, would not even raise an eyebrow. So who would ever know the source of such contributions? No one.

Now, in an October 20 article in Newsmax, writer Kenneth Timmerman provides details from Federal Election Commission records that give substantial weight to my theory. In studying Obama's FEC filings, Newsmax found more than 2,000 donors who had given substantially more than their $4,600 limit ($2,300 in the primaries and $2,300 in the General Election). The law requires that such excess contributions must be returned to the donor within 60 days of the donor going over his/her limit. However, many of the donors contacted by Newsmax said that they had not been contacted by the Obama campaign and that they had not received refunds.

But these are relatively minor infractions compared to 66,383 highly suspicious contributions, from 37,265 donors, whose contributions were not rounded to even dollar amounts. For example, Timmerman tells us that John Atkinson, an insurance agent in Burr Ridge, Illinois, gave a total of $8,724.26. He gave in odd amounts such as $188.67, $1,542.06, $876.09, $388.67, $282.20, $195.66, $118.15, and one of $2,300.

Sandra Daneshinia, a self-employed caregiver of Los Angeles, made 36 separate contributions totaling $7,051.12. Thirteen of her contributions were later refunded. However, in an odd coincidence those 13 refunds, in amounts such as $233.88 and $201.44, came to an even $2,300, the maximum amount allowable in any one election.

One contributor interviewed by Newsmax, Ronald J. Sharpe, Jr., a retired schoolteacher from Rockledge, Florida, is reported to have given $13,800... $9,200 over his limit. However, Mr. Sharpe does not remember giving that much money to Obama, nor has anyone from the campaign ever contacted him about a refund.

Of the 66,383 contributions in odd amounts, 44,410 were in unrounded amounts of less than $100, 15,269 contributions were in unrounded amounts of between $101 and $999, and 704 contributions were in odd amounts greater than $1,000.

Lest anyone suggest that these 37,265 donors either emptied their piggy banks or emptied their pockets and purses periodically and just sent it all to Obama, pennies and all, allow me to suggest something a tiny bit more Macheavellian. Those 66,383 contributions are the proceeds of conversions of foreign currency, smuggled into the country in foreign credit card receipts, and converted to U.S. dollars.

According to a Newsmax analysis, the Obama campaign finance reports contain some 370,500 unique names... a far cry from the 2.5 million contributor base claimed by the campaign. Of course, when your money is coming in large chunks from offshore accounts, such as hundreds of thousands of dollars at a time from the Middle East and from Third World African countries, then laundered though UBS accounts in Zurich, it takes a bit of creativity to put authentic-sounding names on all of it for the FEC records.

How massive is this crime? Since the Obama campaign has refused to disclose their complete contributor list (they continue to hide the identities of some 2 million donors), as the McCain campaign has done, Newsmax estimates that "Obama is financing his presidential campaign with anywhere from $13 million to a whopping $63 million from overseas credit cards or foreign currency purchases."

Given the massive voter registration fraud committed by Obama's supporters, the fraudulent votes already cast in early voting by itinerant out-of-state voters, and the massive crime involved in accepting tens of thousands of illegal foreign contributions, John McCain and Sarah Palin simply must close the gap in the closing days of the campaign. If not, we will inaugurate a man on January 20 who will have to be impeached before his wife has a chance to measure the White House for new draperies.