On Wednesday, Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz introduced legislation which would curtail campaign donation fraud. The law would require that a billing address and credit verification value (CVV) are provided for campaign contributions. Gaetz’s action comes after a March report from O’Keefe Media Group which revealed that Democrats were taking advantage of senior citizen donors on order to launder thousands of dollars. Many of the donors which the O’Keefe Media Group spoke to said they were unaware of the thousands of dollars they are registered to have donated to Democrats over the past few years. Senator Marco Rubio has made a point to investigate the Democrat donation site, Act Blue, and the FEC responded to him by saying that Act Blue does not have adequate security precautions.
Gaetz spoke to The Daily Caller about the bill, saying:
“Through the diligent efforts of citizen journalists, O’Keefe Media Group has uncovered potentially millions of dollars in campaign donation fraud. Unidentified entities or individuals are using the identities of American citizens to perpetrate fraudulent campaign contributions. Termed as ‘zombie donors,’ these fraudulent transactions exploit payment methods that possess scant or negligible identity authentication mechanisms.”
“The ‘Put Zombie Donors to Rest Act’ aims to amend the Internal Revenue Code and mandates the inclusion of both a credit verification value (CVV) and a billing address as mandatory requirements for confirming the donor’s true identity, cross-referencing it with the corresponding address or banking information.”
Founder and CEO of O’Keefe Media Group, James O’Keefe, has said it is unbelievable that the FEC did not look into Act Blue’s scheme before his report. He believes that nothing would have been done without his groups investigation. He added that he fully supports further transparency in political fundraising.
