The Scale of the Fraud Is Massive

The Scale of the Fraud Is Massive

On one of the Washington Post blogs, there is this astonishing story:

There have been a smattering of incidents reported in which people have seen credit card charges surface suggesting they donated to Barack Obama when they did not.

Now comes the story of Mary T. Biskup, of Manchester, Missouri. Biskup got a call recently from the Obama campaign, which was trying to figure out why she donated $174,800 to the campaign -- well over the contribution limit of $2,300.

The answer she gave them was simple. "That's an error."

Biskup, a retired insurance manager who occasionally submits recipes to the local paper, says someone used a credit card to donate the money in her name. No charges ever showed up on her credit card statement.

"We're not out a penny," Biskup said. "I gather that someone has hacked into something using other people's credit cards and putting my name on it."

Obama's campaign spotted the irregular donations, more than 70 of which all arrived on the same day, and aides to the senator said they refunded the money. The campaign began investigating immediately.

As some bright commenter pointed out, if the donation wasn't charged to Biskup's credit card, then where did the Obama campaign refund the bogus contributions to? I've seen suggestions that what we may be seeing is a very large scale laundering of money from overseas, using the names of real Americans to hide contributions that are unlawful--and might explain why some of the amounts are for small amounts, sometimes with a few odd cents involved. (These would be the results of currency translation taking place after there had been a change in exchange rates. After all, bin Laden's cave isn't exactly Internet connected.) This would explain how Obama's campaign could "refund" credit card contributions where the person whose credit card was supposedly used claims not to have any charges on her card.

If anything this odd were going on with the McCain campaign, the mainstream media would be screaming up a storm. Isn't it odd that these reports keep popping up--and nothing happens? One would hope that someone in the Justice Department would be investigating--but I'm sure that the lawyers there all have Obama stickers on their cars.