This is not news to readers of The Minority Report. Weeks ago we discussed an article from NewsMax.com. In that report by Keith Timmerman it was noted:
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.
Again, this understanding that massive amounts of foreign money was coming illegally into the Obama Campaign was not limited to the right side of the Blogoshere. Dowd, in her piece, noted that her source within the campaign recognized that these illegal contributions were taking place.
While the security people were not able to track most of the sources due to firewalls and other blocking devices put on these contributions they were able to collate the number of contributions that were coming in seemingly from individuals but the funds were from only a few credit card accounts and bank electronic funds transfers. The internet service providers (ISP) they were able to trace were from Saudi Arabia , Iran , and other Middle Eastern countries. One of the banks used for fund transfers was also located in Saudi Arabia .
Another concentrated group of donations was traced to a Chinese ISP with a similar pattern of limited credit card charges.
It became clear that these donations were very likely coming from sources other than American voters. This was discussed at length within the campaign and the decision was made that none of these donations violated campaign financing laws.
It was also decided that it was not the responsibility of the campaign to audit these e-millions of contributions as to the actual source (specific credit card number or bank transfer account numbers) to insure that none of these internet contributors exceeded the legal maximum donation on a cumulative basis of many small donations. They also found the record keeping was not complete enough to do it anyway.
Note, it was the decision of the Obama campaign that as long as the donations were under the $200 limit that Campaign Finance Law required be reported, they were not responsible and were unable to account for them.
But, e-commerce is nothing new to American consumers. Anyone who has ever bought a pair of shoes on the internet knows that questions such as name, address and security codes are asked, to prevent fraud. How is it possible that the Obama Campaign would be unable to track donations?
The Obama Campaign deliberately disabled all of the safeguards against fraud. The Obama Campaign disabled the safeguards that compare name, address or security code. All they cared about was a valid credit card number to which they could bill the donor.
The National Review Online posted this explanation today;
As readers may recall, a couple of days ago it became clear that the Obama website had intentionally disabled all the basic credit-card-processing security checks and thereby enabled multiple contributions from donors with fake names. The excuse offered in the New York Times story was that, ah, yes, the Obama gang may appear to accept contributions from "Mr Fake Donor" of "23 Fraudulent Lane", but all those phony baloney contributions are picked up by their rigorous offline checking procedures. As many Obama supporters wrote to point out, simply because you get a message saying "Thank you for contributing to the Obama landslide, Mr S Hussein of 47 Spider-Hole Gardens (basement flat), Tikrit!" is no reason to believe any real money is actually leaving real accounts.
The gentleman who started the ball rolling made four donations under the names "John Galt", "Saddam Hussein", "Osama bin Laden", and "William Ayers", all using the same credit card number. He wrote this morning to say that all four donations have been charged to his card and the money has now left his account. Again, it's worth pointing out: in order to enable the most basic card fraud of all - multiple names using a single credit card number - the Obama campaign had to manually disable all the default security checks provided by their merchant processor.
While the Obama Campaign made the claim that the same thing was happening with the McCain Campaign, efforts by the same individual to make contributions using fake names and addresses were not accepted.
What allows the Obama Campaign to circumvent the law?
Ironically, a feature of Campaign Finance Law that requires a candidate provide documentation on any donation greater than $200 is the loophole that has allowed this fraud to take place. While the McCain Campaign has made public every single donation regardless of size, the Obama Campaign has hidden behind that $200 threshold.
The bulk of Sen Obama's massive $450 million donations have been below that $200 threshold, and the campaign has refused to reveal those donors. Technically, they are within the law by not revealing their donors, although the disabling of all security measures that might prevent fraud, calls into questions his motives.
As noted in that original Minority Report article:
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.
The numbers for Mr Pro are even more questionable.
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.
In their own investigation into the matter, the New York Times found little to be concerned about. Ignoring the massive fraud, they chose instead to focus on a few smaller donations.
Last December, somebody using the name “Test Person,” from “Some Place, UT” made a series of contributions, the largest being $764, to Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign totaling $2,410.07.
Someone else identifying himself as “Jockim Alberton,” from 1581 Leroy Ave. in Wilmington, Del., began giving to Obama last November, contributing $10 and $25 at a time for a total of $445 through the end of February.
Perhaps the New York Times should consult their own columnist Maureen Dowd. The Times' willful ignorance borders on criminal negligence.
To some Republicans angered by Sen McCain's CFR legislation it is delicious that he is being beaten by a technicality of his own making. If the results of this election were not so crucial for the direction taken by this country, they might be reveling in the irony of this turn of events.
I’m not sure that they are relevant to anyone. We could get excited if this means that it gets coverage elsewhere though.
I think I can say, and say with pride, that we have legislatures that bring higher prices than any in the world. ~ Mark Twain