This week the Obama campaign has been hit hard on the issue of illegal foreign and fraudulent online campaign donations. First there was a Newsweek story on the threat of such donations. Then there was Team Obama’s response to it, literally minutes after the story came out.
Wynton Hall reports for Breitbart.com:
Earlier today, Breitbart News and myriad news agencies reported on a new 108-page investigation conducted by the Government Accountability Institute (GAI) which examines the online donation systems of the entire U.S. Congress and the two presidential candidates. The report found that 47.3% of all House and Senate donation websites do not require online donors to enter their credit card security code (officially known as a CVV, or Card Verification Value), which leaves them vulnerable to foreign and fraudulent contributions.
Governor Mitt Romney’s website requires donors to enter a credit card security code, while President Barack Obama’s does not. The GAI report also revealed that Obama.com is not owned by the president’s campaign but rather by Robert Roche, an American businessman and top Obama fundraiser living in Shanghai, China, whose company has ties to the Chinese government.
Within hours of a Newsweek article on the report’s release, the Obama campaign issued a dismissive response. The Obama campaign’s rapid-fire attack against the report did not mention Robert Roche, Obama.com, the Obama campaign’s failure to require donors to enter their CVV code, or the report’s finding that 68% of the traffic going to Obama.com originates from foreign locations.
This lead to a blogger over at Red State, Erick Erickson, put through a phony name and residence along with a $5 donation to the Obama campaign via their website. Team Obama was happy to accept it from the “Russian Federation.”
According to Erickson, all of the information he provided was completely made up, except for the actual credit card number he used.
This was the information furnished by Erickson. He placed a string of 0s in the passport number section, which you cannot see.
Here’s what Erickson received as his donation was processed
Here is the receipt from his online account where he made the donation
What’s interesting is that Erickson’s bank was the one to reverse the donation, not the Obama campaign. Now the Obama campaign is attempting damage control over the millions of dollars it has processed through its websites.
