Last week, U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., introduced a bill “aimed at preventing fraudulent campaign donations.”
Gaetz brought out the “Put Zombie Donors to Rest Act,” which “would amend the Internal Revenue Code to require a billing address and credit verification value (CVV) for contributions to political organizations.”
The congressman’s office pointed to an investigation from a conservative media company.
“On March 28th, 2023, the O’Keefe Media Group, an investigative news organization, published a report uncovering a ‘national plot to utilize senior citizens matching a similar profile as vehicles to launder millions of dollars into political campaigns.’ In response to a letter sent to the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) by Florida Senator Marco Rubio, the FEC said it ‘does not impose requirements for specific safety or security guardrails that political committees must use to accept online donations.’ Instead, the FEC lays the responsibility on political committees, saying committees ‘must use appropriate screening procedures’ because federal law does not require the FEC to review these donations itself,” Gaetz’s office noted.
“Through the diligent efforts of citizen journalists, O’Keefe Media Group has uncovered potentially millions of dollars in campaign donation fraud. Unidentified entities or individuals are using the identities of American citizens to perpetrate fraudulent campaign contributions. Termed as ‘zombie donors,’ these fraudulent transactions exploit payment methods that possess scant or negligible identity authentication mechanisms. The ‘Put Zombie Donors to Rest Act’ aims to amend the Internal Revenue Code and mandates the inclusion of both a credit verification value (CVV) and a billing address as mandatory requirements for confirming the donor’s true identity, cross-referencing it with the corresponding address or banking information,” Gaetz said.
The bill was sent to the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee. So far, U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., is the only co-sponsor. So far, there is no companion measure over in the U.S. Senate.
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