Small Donors Scammed By Clinton Campaign Using Repeat Unauthorized Credit Card Taps

 

Donate once to Hillary Clinton's campaign using a debit or credit card and you're likely be the gift that keeps on giving whether you want to or not.

The Clinton campaign has been caught red handed victimizing small, usually low income donors by the simple method of just resubmitting what was supposed to be a one time donation over and over again.



The New York Observer* has the story:

Hillary Clinton’s campaign is stealing from her poorest supporters by purposefully and repeatedly overcharging them after they make what’s supposed to be a one-time small donation through her official campaign website, multiple sources tell the Observer.

The overcharges are occurring so often that the fraud department at one of the nation’s biggest banks receives up to 100 phone calls a day from Clinton’s small donors asking for refunds for unauthorized charges to their bankcards made by Clinton’s campaign. One elderly Clinton donor, who has been a victim of this fraud scheme, has filed a complaint with her state’s attorney general and a representative from the office told her that they had forwarded her case to the Federal Election Commission.

“We get up to a hundred calls a day from Hillary’s low-income supporters complaining about multiple unauthorized charges,” a source, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of job security, from the Wells Fargo fraud department told the Observer. The source claims that the Clinton campaign has been pulling this stunt since Spring of this year. The Hillary for America campaign will overcharge small donors by repeatedly charging small amounts such as $20 to the bankcards of donors who made a one-time donation. However, the Clinton campaign strategically doesn’t overcharge these donors $100 or more because the bank would then be obligated to investigate the fraud.

“We don’t investigate fraudulent charges unless they are over $100,” the fraud specialist explained. “The Clinton campaign knows this, that’s why we don’t see any charges over the $100 amount, they’ll stop the charges just below $100. We’ll see her campaign overcharge donors by $20, $40 or $60 but never more than $100.” The source, who has worked for Wells Fargo for over 10 years, said that the total amount they refund customers on a daily basis who have been overcharged by Clinton’s campaign “varies” but the bank usually issues refunds that total between $700 and $1200 per day.

The fraud specialist said that Clinton donors who call in will attempt to resolve the issue with the campaign first but they never get anywhere. “They will call the Clinton campaign to get their refund and the issue never gets resolved. So they call us and we just issue the refund. The Clinton campaign knows these charges are small potatoes and that we’ll just refund the money back.”

The source said that pornography companies often deploy a similar arrangement pull. “We see this same scheme with a lot of seedy porn companies,” the source said. The source also notes that the dozens of phone calls his department receives daily are from people who notice the fraudulent charges on their statements. “The people who call us are just the ones who catch the fraudulent charges. I can’t imagine how many more people are getting overcharged by Hillary’s campaign and they have no idea.”

The Observer also found a number of people who had been victimized by the Clinton Campaign in this way. One of them is Carol Mahre, an 81-year-old grandmother of seven from Minnesota who made a single one time donation of $25 dollars 'because I'm not rich.'

But when she received her US Bank card statement, she saw multiple $25 charges on it She contacted her son, Roger Mahre, to help to straighten the matter out.

Her son, an attorney said he called the Clinton Campaign numerous times:

“It took me at least 40 to 50 phone calls to the campaign office before I finally got ahold of someone,” Roger said. “After I got a campaign worker on the phone, she said they would stop making the charges.”

Incredibly, the very next day, Carol’s card was charged yet again and the campaign had never reversed the initial fraudulent charges. “I was told they would stop charging my mother’s card but they never stopped.” He added that he knows his mother did not sign up for recurring payments. “She’s very good with the Internet so I know she only made a one-time payment.” Roger also pointed out that even if his mother mistakenly signed up for recurring monthly payments then she should’ve been charged for the same amount of money each month, not multiple charges for varying amounts on the same day or in the same month. Furthermore, Roger said that after the campaign was made aware of this situation, the charges should’ve stopped but they never did.

The Clinton campaign overcharged Carol $25 three times and then overcharged her one time for $19, a grand total of $94 in fraudulent charges. The campaign’s overcharges to Carol were just a few dollars short of $100. This is in line with what the Wells Fargo bank source revealed to the Observer.

Since the campaign failed to amend the problem for Carol, Roger contacted her bank, US Bank. However, he ran into problems when he asked US Bank to refund his mother’s money. Roger told the Observer that the bank would not reverse the charges and that a bank spokesperson told him that they had no control over companies that make unauthorized charges. At that point, Roger decided to contact his local news and filed a fraud complaint with Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson’s office on behalf of his mother. After local TV news Kare 11 ran a story, someone from US Bank contacted Roger the next day and said that they had reversed and stopped the charges to his mother’s card.

A representative from Minnesota’s Democratic attorney general’s office told Roger that this problem wasn’t in their jurisdiction and that they had forwarded the case to the FEC. However, FEC spokesperson Julia Queen told the Observer they have no record of the case. “We don’t have it,” Queen said. The Observer contacted Swanson’s office and did not hear back.

Roger did eventually get a letter from a lawyer representing the Clinton campaign. In the letter, the lawyer wrote that his mother would be removed from their donor list; however, the campaign did not take any responsibility for the fraudulent charges.

“They basically said that they weren’t accepting responsibility for this but they’d remove my mom from the donor list,” he said. Roger is less than happy with the way the Clinton campaign has handled this nightmare for him and his mother. “This is a load of crap!” Mahre said. “The self-righteousness of politicians drives me insane. If you and I did this, we’d be thrown in jail. This is theft, fraud or wire fraud – it’s a federal crime!”

(Federal crime? Yeah, perhaps, but somehow, I wouldn't count on the FBI to investigate - ed. note)

Since Carol’s story became public, Roger said he’s heard from other people who have been ripped off by the Clinton campaign. “I’ve heard this is happening to other small donors,” Roger said. “People will donate $25 but then when they receive their credit card statement they are charged $25 multiple times.”

You have to wonder what kind of human being resorts to this, victimizing those whom can least afford it. And she claims to be the champion of 'the little people?'

Also, this is apparently not a new tactic for Mrs. Clinton, as the NY Times reported back in 2007, and she ended up having to refund a record $2.8 million in fraudulent donations.

She even reportedly did this to some of her own campaign workers in the 2008 campaign.

If she can get away with selling her office and confidential intelligence for hundreds of millions of dollars, she will assuredly skate on this scam, especially with the cooperation of loyal Democrats like Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson.

One can only imagine how Mrs. Clinton would behave as president.

Crooked Hillary, indeed.


* Full disclosure, The New York Observer is published by Jared Kushner, Donald Trump's son-in-law. The Observer's story cites numerous outside sources,which are linked here.