Obama Accepting Untraceable Donations (prepaid credit cards this time)

[Wretched Excess]

jeeez, how deep does this thing go?  this will definitely be a scandal by january.  it's just a question of whether it will be a scandal and a constitutional crisis involving the president.

Obama Accepting Untraceable Donations

Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign is allowing donors to use largely untraceable prepaid credit cards that could potentially be used to evade limits on how much an individual is legally allowed to give or to mask a contributor's identity, campaign officials confirmed.

Faced with a huge influx of donations over the Internet, the campaign has also chosen not to use basic security measures to prevent potentially illegal or anonymous contributions from flowing into its accounts, aides acknowledged. Instead, the campaign is scrutinizing its books for improper donations after the money has been deposited.

The Obama organization said its extensive review has ensured that the campaign has refunded any improper contributions, and noted that Federal Election Commission rules do not require front-end screening of donations.

In recent weeks, questionable contributions have created headaches for Obama's accounting team as it has tried to explain why campaign finance filings have included itemized donations from individuals using fake names, such as Es Esh or Doodad Pro. Those revelations prompted conservative bloggers to further test Obama's finance vetting by giving money using the kind of prepaid cards that can be bought at a drugstore and cannot be traced to a donor.

The problem with such cards, campaign finance lawyers said, is that they make it impossible to tell whether foreign nationals, donors who have exceeded the limits, government contractors or others who are barred from giving to a federal campaign are making contributions.

"They have opened the floodgates to all this money coming in," said Sean Cairncross, chief counsel to the Republican National Committee. "I think they've made the determination that whatever money they have to refund on the back end doesn't outweigh the benefit of taking all this money upfront."

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[Wretched Excess]

amazingly enough, the washington post and atlanta journal-constitution are running this story in their print edition.  the NYT and PMSNBC have it stuck away in their blogs . . . 

[Chris_]

"Now, kids, when your mommy and daddy are asleep, go into their room and take the green papers out of their wallet, put them in an envelope and write:

barak osama
The Socialist Labor Party
1 TaxYouAss Lane
Chicago, IL

on the front. Put one of those little sticky square things that mommy or daddy put on envelopes like that and give it to the nice mail delivery guy."

[jinxmchue]

I said it before and I'll say it again: if Obama is elected president, he will be the most corrupt president ever elected in the most corrupt manner ever.

[Wretched Excess]

it's a dem tradition.  does everyone remember "no controlling legal authority"?

[Tess Anderson]

Couldn't the WaPo find ONE credit card company security expert who wasn't affiliated with the DNC?

When asked whether the campaign takes steps to verify whether a donor's name matches the name on the credit card used to make a payment, Obama's campaign replied in an e-mail: "Name-matching is not a standard check conducted or made available in the credit card processing industry. We believe Visa and MasterCard do not even have the ability to do this."

That's another lie. Name matching and address verification is standard procedure for processing credit cards on the internet. "Team Obama" purposely set it low:

link

Hot Air did:

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.

That would include, say, fradulent and overseas "donations".

[lastparker]

it's a dem tradition.  does everyone remember "no controlling legal authority"?

~Shudder~

Thank God I didn't have to look at that face every day for four years.

[Thor]

Couldn't the WaPo find ONE credit card company security expert who wasn't affiliated with the DNC?

That's another lie. Name matching and address verification is standard procedure for processing credit cards on the internet. "Team Obama" purposely set it low:

link

Hot Air did:

That would include, say, fraudulent and overseas "donations".

Well, as I heard, Joe Biden is well affiliated with most of the major credit card companies. (through his son)

[Tess Anderson]

You did hear about the Missouri woman who's donated over $174,000 to the Barack Hussein Obama campaign?:

Which brings us to the case of Mary T Biskup of Manchester, Mo, who discovered there were scores of small online donations made to the Obama campaign in her name, even though she hasn't given him a dime. They added up to $174,800, which is a wee bit over the $2,300 limit. This very generous donation was not billed to her own card, but to someone else's - meaning (as the Post says) "someone appropriated her name".

nro

He's beyond dirty. 

[jinxmchue]

You did hear about the Missouri woman who's donated over $174,000 to the Barack Hussein Obama campaign?:

nro

He's beyond dirty. 

Wow.