It taints the entire process, not just the individual campaigns. To be clear, I am not advocating that anyone try to do this, and anyone who does try it should go to jail for a very long time. Having said that, here is how you could game the system:
You could buy a large number of gift cards, say 10,000 at a time, and use them with fake names and addresses every day, donating $100 or thereabouts. That would equal $1,000,000 per day.They could vary the amount and times of submission to hide the trail, and could switch out cards to hide the totals. 10,000 donations could be made by 100 people making 100 donations each per day. It could all be run from any office on the planet with computers and an Internet connection. A bigger operation could do more. The only limits on scale are the number of gift cards and people manning computers. For someone trying to uncover the fraud, the obvious clue to follow would be the large number of gift cards that would need to be amassed. Could you track that? I'm sure Visa/MC could track card numbers to locations they were distributed, but a clever person could have people run around to stores in various areas and buy cards in small batches, say 20 at a time, and it would probably not trip any triggers. You could also try to track the IP address and other info of the computers used for the donations, but we all know how easy that information is to fake. A professional operation would not be caught so easily. If I was an enemy of the United States and I wanted to make sure one candidate was elected, I would absolutely try and pull off this kind of an operation. I could find plenty of willing participants who, by nature of shared hatred of the US, could be trusted not to divulge our secret operation, and if I was the head of an un-democratic country, I could be assured that even if caught, I would face no punishment, and in fact I might be a hero to other enemies of the US for pulling the wool over their eyes. On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 3:11 PM, Maureen wrote: > > > And note my earlier message that the McCain websites also accept > prepaid cards, so if accepting the cards taints one campaign, it > taints them both. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Adobe® ColdFusion® 8 software 8 is the most important and dramatic release to date Get the Free Trial http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;207172674;29440083;f Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:277357 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.5
