Thread: Obama Ignores Credit Card Donation Fraud

Obama Ignores Credit Card Donation Fraud

Tuesday, October 21, 2008 10:01 PM

By: Kenneth R. Timmerman Article Font Size

What do Bart Simpson, Family Guy, Daffy Duck, King Kong, O.J. Simpson, and Raela Odinga have in common?

All are celebrities; and with the exception of Odinga and O.J. Simpson, they also are fictional characters. And yet, all of them gave money earlier this month to the campaign of Barack Obama, without any apparent effort by the campaign to screen them out as suspect donors.

The Obama fundraising machine may owe its sensational success in part to a relaxation of standard online merchant security practices, which has allowed illegal donations from foreign donors and from unknown individuals using anonymous “giftâ€

Daffy Duck may be the least of the credit card scam donations.

By Alex Fees

KSDK -- At least four credit card holders in Missouri have recently opened their statements and found unauthorized transactions, which charged $2,300 to the presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama.

It happened to Tom Brown and his wife a couple weeks ago. They became aware of it after Discover sent them an e-mail about an unusually large purchase.

"My wife said, 'Oh my God!' Right away, she called Discover to cancel the card," Brown said. "I talked to Discover about it, and they said it looks like it was keyed in from Chicago."

Specifically, the e-mail indicated the charge came from Obama for America Chicago Illinois. The Browns were able to get the charge refunded by Discover.

"It was under his name. Under 'merchant,' it read 'Obama for America.' And we basically would not give a politician $2,300 dollars. We would not give any politician, probably, a dollar. And I really, basically, don't know who's at fault, for this, or who did what," Brown said. "But someone out there is trying to hit people's charges and collect money. We were just interested in letting other people know that this could happen to them."

Brown pointed out this was not a story about politics; it's about credit card fraud.

"We mainly wanted to make sure it just got to the public that no one else gets taken advantage of?because our feeling is what happens if someone else would not check their charge, and then they're stuck with the charge?" he said.

Officials with the Obama Campaign in Missouri said they were aware of the suspicious credit card charges. Friday, the Missouri Obama Communications Director released this statement: "The Obama campaign is not responsible for these charges, but we have refunded all of the affected individuals and we are working closely with authorities regarding these questionable charges."

It was not known whether that statement was an indication that some of the credit card money did get to the Obama Campaign, even if they did not initiate the charges.

A spokesperson for the Missouri Attorney General's office has told the Associated Press that they were investigating a "handful" of similar incidents.

http://www.ksdk.com/news/local/story.as ... 67&catid=3