Fictitious Donors Found in Obama Finance Records

Last December, someone using the name "Test Person," from "Some Place, UT," made a series of contributions, the largest being $764, to Senator Barack Obama's presidential campaign totaling $2,410.07.

Someone identifying himself as "Jockim Alberton," from 1581 Leroy Avenue in Wilmington, Delaware, began giving to Obama last November, contributing $10 and $25 at a time for a total of $445 through the end of February.

The only problem? There is no Leroy Avenue in Wilmington. And Jockim Alberton, who listed his employer and occupation as "Fdsa Fdsa," does not show up in a search of public records.

An analysis of campaign finance records by The New York Times this week found nearly 3,000 donations to Obama, the Democratic nominee, from more than a dozen people with apparently fictitious donor information. The contributions represent a tiny fraction of the record $450 million Obama has raised. But the questionable donations — some donors were listed simply with gibberish for their names — raise concerns about whether the Obama campaign is adequately vetting its unprecedented flood of donors.

It is unclear why someone making a political donation would want to enter a false name. Some perhaps did it for privacy reasons. Another, more ominous possibility, of course, is fraud, perhaps in order to donate beyond the maximum limits.

There is no evidence that questionable contributions amount to anything more than a small portion of Obama's fund-raising haul. The Times's analysis, conducted over a few days and looking for obvious anomalies, like names or addresses with all consonants, identified about $40,000 in suspect contributions that had not been refunded by the campaign as of its last filing with the Federal Election Commission, in September.

It appears that campaign finance records for Senator John McCain, the Republican nominee, contain far fewer obviously false names, although he has taken in about $200 million in contributions, less than half Obama's total. McCain did collect about $173,000 from donors who appear in campaign finance records with only a name and have no other identifying information. Obama collected about $314,000 from such donors.

Although campaigns have long wrestled with questionable donations, Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, said the record-setting number of new donors Obama has drawn, many of them online, presents new challenges to a compliance system that remains stuck in the past.

Krumholz pointed out, however, that it would take an extraordinary amount of coordination to pull off widespread fraud.

Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, highlighted the more than 2.5 million donors it had to wade through. "We have been aggressive about taking every available step," he said, "to make sure our contributions are appropriate, updating our systems when necessary."

But even a contributor who used the name "Jgtj Jfggjjfgj," and listed an address of "thjtrj" in "gjtjtjtjtjtjr, AP," was able to contribute $370 in a series of $10 donations in August.

A pair of donors named "Derty West" and "Derty Poiiuy," who listed "rewq, ME" as their addresses and "Qwertyyy" or "Qwerttyyu" as either their employer or occupation, contributed a combined $1,110 in July.

In some cases, campaign finance records showed refunds from the Obama campaign, presumably to donors' credit cards, even as other contributions were accepted. Obama officials said most of their vetting occurred after a donation came in.

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See? No one is completely free of corruption.