South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson has sent a letter to the CEO of ActBlue over allegations that the political fundraising group may have engaged in potentially fraudulent, deceptive, or otherwise illegal activities.
ActBlue is a political action committee and fundraising platform to serve left-leaning and Democratic nonprofits and politicians.
“It has come to my attention that these alleged activities may include ‘smurfing,’ a money laundering technique where large sums of money are ‘donated’ to a political candidate (or committee), and are broken down through smaller, less conspicuous amounts. Based on publicly accessible information, some individual donors in South Carolina have purportedly donated funds through ActBlue in prolific volumes that appear implausible and highly suspicious,” Attorney General Wilson writes in the letter.
He says this raises the question of whether contributions by ActBlue are really from straw-donors or fictitious accounts, which could indicate fraud. It also raises the question of whether contributions were made in the donors’ names without their knowledge or consent.
If the allegations are true, they could violate South Carolina laws as well as the Federal Election Campaign Act.
“South Carolinians are entitled to transparency and the assurance that nonprofit and political entities are financed legally. Any deviation from this transparency undermines the integrity of our elections and political processes. And as the chief legal officer in South Carolina, it is my duty to ensure unequivocal compliance with the law,” he writes to Regina Wallace Jones, CEO of ActBlue.
He's requesting the group provide a detailed description of ActBlue’s processes for verifying the legitimacy of donor information, as well as the information reported to South Carolina’s regulatory bodies, by Friday, September 6th.
Original source can be found here.