The five minute guide to the Obama fundraising scandals

The website Obama Shrugged has a good concise guide to the unprecedented fundraising practices of the Obama campaign, leaving the door wide open for fraudulent and illegal contributions. A sample:

• On October 22, a citizen does his own investigative work and gives an online donation to the Obama campaign with a the fake name of John Galt along with a fake address. Several bloggers quickly follow up on this story with their own investigative work and find that they too can donate to the Obama campaign with fake names and addresses. Most disturbingly, foreign citizens were also able to donate using their foreign issued credit cards with fake foreign addresses.
• By now, it has become common knowledge that the Obama campaign is the ONLY campaign to NOT disclose their "under $200″ campaign donor list. No substantive reasons are given by the Obama campaign.
• On October 24, it is confirmed by the National Journal that the Obama campaign has turned off address verification on their website. This is highly irregular - in fact, it's quite unheard of. Essentially, turning off address verification (known as AVS) enables donors to fake addresses and circumvent donor limits. This means foreigners can give illegal donations and motivated Obama supporters can exceed the $2300 campaign limit! As Internet and e-commerce professionals, we launch this blog to raise the issue of how highly irregular and potentially unethical it is to turn off online credit card address verification.