RUSSIA TARGETING BLACK LIVES MATTER, LEFT-LEANING VOTERS ONLINE: INTELLIGENCE SOURCES
Precisely determining if the donations were authentic and genuinely from those who were unemployed requires further time and resources, he said.
“Auditing these suspect donations to determine if millions lied by indicating they were unemployed when in fact they were not, or if their names were just being used by a foreign programmer or someone else to move money without their knowledge, will take time,” Pudner said. “We’ve planned a series of forensic procedures to identify whether or not these donors of record exist or not, if they made the contributions themselves, and whether they were legally able, and whether or not they are potential ‘straw’ donors, making the contributions after being given the money and direction by someone else.”
Both WinRed and ActBlue note on their donation pages that law requires donors to list their employer and occupation. "The problem," Pudner said, "is on the back end where ActBlue does not allow banks to verify the identity of the cardholder, meaning someone could buy endless gift cards and list any name they wanted and leave the employer line blank or type in words like 'not employed,' 'unemployed.'" "With half of ActBlue donors indicating they do not have an employer, we recommend they start letting their payment processors verify donations to stop any foreign or other illicit donations by simply listing themselves as an unemployed American," Pudner added.