When asked about the possibility that a single person could use fake names to mask many donations sent via a few credit cards, [General Counsel, Robert] Bauer responded that "both campaigns seem to be in a similar position." National Journal here
McCain does not accept these donations. We have attempted time and time again.
The McCain campaign does accept normal credit card donations because staffers can easily check whether the owner of the credit card shares the same billing address as the listed donor, she said. That address-check process costs the campaign about 12 cents, she said.
"We could lower our standards and accept more money... but this is John McCain's campaign, and he wants to root out fraud in fundraising and have everything open and as honest as possible," said Donatelli. National Journal here
Craig confirms that the credit card charges for John Galt, Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden, and Bill Ayers have gone through. So much for Obama's rigorous credit card screening. 
This from Craig
It took a few days to confirm, but as of this morning all four charges have posted to my CC account (see attached). Remember, these were all separate donations made by:
John Galt
Saddam Hussein
Osama Bin Laden
Bill Ayers
And I have the screenshots to prove it. Also, I made another attempt this morning to make a $10 donation under the name Tony Rezko (See attached.) And it went thru again. So reports that this has been fixed are erroneous.
Further, last night on Sheppard Smith’s 3pm-ET show this issue was brought up briefly and they cited the Obama campaign falsely claiming that this sort of thing happens at the McCain site and that they catch these errors later in the processing. Well, it took three days to process my donations and they all skated through their rigorous screening.
TONY REZKO!
UPDATED: JOHN GALT AKA CRAIG ADDS THIS (Craig is the reader who conducted this "experiment":
A few more points on this:
I’m in the web development business and it’s clear to me that Obama has a sophisticated system that could easily flag and reject these donations if they wished to do so. The fact that only one of my donations showed up on my CC statement within the first 24-hrs initially gave me pause that they were screening for fraud (even though I gave a completely fake address that didn’t match my card). However, when the other three donations showed up three days later, it only confirmed my worst suspicions.
Believe me, a major part of what I do for a living is Web-Analytics where I analyze and digest website traffic statistics on individual websites and sort thru in the most miniscule of detail; new visitors, browser type, sales transactions, email addresses etc. This is WebStuff 101. And even the most basic Web-Analytics and database tools would allow Obama to reject these phony donations before they occur, as the McCain site does. Further, it’s laughable that the Obama camp claim it’s too complicated to make their under-$200 donor information available. Again, even the most basic Web-Analytics and database tools would allow the Obama camp to make this info available the way McCain does. This openness, on McCain’s part, enabled the AP to finally find something worthy of reporting on the issue:
“The McCain Campaign website also lists 23 anonymous contributions in excess of fifty dollars, despite the legal requirement to maintain the name and address of each contributor any amount in excess of $50, and dozens of additional donors who provided incomplete information.” (link here)
The info is easily available if you try. But Obama isn’t trying, and in fact has enabled the fraud to occur. This is a clear case of facilitation of fraud. As others have reported:
“I]n order to accept donations from "Della Ware" and "Saddam Hussein" et al, the Obama website had, intentionally, to disable all the default security settings on their credit-card processing. I took a look at the inner sanctum of my (alas, far more modest) online retail operation this afternoon and, in order to permit fraud as easy as that which the Obama campaign is facilitating, you have to uncheck every single box on the AVS system, each one of which makes it very explicit just what you're doing - ie, accepting transactions with no "billing address", no "street address" match, no "zip code" match, with a bank "of non-US origin" (I've got nothing against those, but a US campaign fundraiser surely should be wary), etc. When you've disabled the whole lot one step at a time, then you've got a system tailor-made for fake names and bogus addresses.”
UPDATE: OBAMA'S FUNDING FRAUD Poltical Inquirer (hat tip Cathy)
Let me make one thing clear: I do not think that Obama’s internet team is more incompetant than an high school Intro to Web Commerce class. Therefore, since their site would not survive 20 second of even the most cursorary ethical hack test on their credit card use, it can only be because it has been a deliberate effort to permit massive credit card fraud and violate election laws wholesale. The site accepts a valid credit card number, then does not validate it against anything else entered! And has been in this state for months. This is the only credit card accepting site I have seen in the last 12 years that has this complete lack of control. Just read the updates here to see how ludicrous this is.
As such, it should be incumbent on the Federal Election Commission to demand a full data dump of all contribution (including sub-$200 amounts) made to the Obama campaign and to put it through the following basic analysis (this wouldn’t take a week; this is the type of stuff I do):
- The total amount by credit card number
- The total amount per address, as based on the valid addresses of credit cards (from the credit card services)
- The amount where there are multiple mismatches of address per card (name, street and city mismatching would be a start).
- The number of donations whose client was a foreign IP address
- Track down the purchase locations of gift cards used and how many are foreign.
This would be only a start, but it would prove quite illuminating; trust me. If they find what I suspect, they should immediately notify the Obama campaign- and the general public- that there are serious problems- the general size of the problem (most likely deep in the 8 digit range) and that matching fines will be forthcoming.
The comment section was rich with intel:
UPDATE: I just realized something (it¢s been awhile since I wrote credit card code); I don¢t believe any standard automated service would accept simply the unverified credit card number. They either are doing it in collusion with a credit card processor willing to accept a high rate of fraud, or they are manually re-entering the card number and amount as you would do in your neighborhood sandwich shop. Either way, there is extra work that actually has gone on to perpetrate the fraud.The other issue to understand in this is the vendor¢s involvement, because that is a very suspicious arrangement. They very likely are taking in excessive number of bogus charges. They have to make good on the ones on which a customer complains, but the question is; is the company getting reimbursed from the Obama campaign or essentially making a multi-million dollar illegal contribution by eating it and serving as a money launderer for one of Obama¢s billionare friends? And bogus ones not caught by the credit card holders, or reported (or addressed after the election) don¢t enter into the picture. One wonders how clear is the charge showing up on the bills; Many internet purchases end up as pretty arcane entries on statements. Lots of questions, very few answers, and very little time to find them.
