Mark Block, former chief of staff to Republican 2012 presidential candidate Herman Cain, alleges that a total of $884.38 given in his name and without his knowledge between May and October was designed to circumvent federal election law and may be part of a larger scam involving tens of thousands of unwitting donors.
The individual donations were all under $200, meaning that they did not have to be reported to the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
Block describes the scheme as “smurfing,” a form of money laundering that involves breaking up large-scale campaign donations into smaller amounts to disguise the real donor and allow the bypassing of contribution limits.
He alleges that the ActBlue donations qualify as “racketeering activity” under Wisconsin law and has requested a temporary injunction prohibiting any more donations in his name.
Block said he discovered ActBlue donation receipts in his old Cain campaign email account, including 35 earmarked to Kamala Harris and one to an LGBTQ campaign.
The GOP-led House Committee on House Administration is already investigating claims that donations in the names of oblivious donors like Block are being laundered by ActBlue including via gift cards and prepaid credit cards.
Experts working for the committee used AI to analyze more than 200 million FEC records spanning the last 14 years and identified suspicious trends, including hundreds of $2.50 donations from the same individual, donations in amounts far greater than the donor could afford, and unusually frequent donations from elderly people or first-time contributors.
Block’s lawsuit is expected to be the first of many related to the investigation and launched in multiple states.
“Given [Block’s conservative] political leanings, he would never consent to monetary contributions to any of the ActBlue Campaigns,” says his lawsuit, filed in Waukesha County Court in Wisconsin.
Black did not “make, authorize, or consent to these donations to the ActBlue Campaigns.”
According to Just the News, who first reported on the lawsuit, one of the ActBlue email receipts Block discovered was for a donation of $7.50 made in June to the Equality PAC, the political arm of the liberal-leaning Congressional LGBTQ Equality Caucus.
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Some 234 donations to various left-wing causes were set up to repeat weekly, 86 were one-time donations, and 65 were monthly recurrences. The average donation was just $3.24.
“While fraudulent donations of such small amounts may seem inefficacious, this pattern is able to exploit a loophole for federal reporting requirements,” says Block’s lawsuit. “The ActBlue Donations appear to be part of a larger pattern of suspicious activity.”
The defendant in the lawsuit is “John Doe,” an unidentified donor whose American Express card, linked to an address in Santa Monica, Calif., was used for the donations.
“By making these fraudulent donations, John Doe participated in the operation of ActBlue’s particular business model: providing small donor campaign contributions to Democratic campaigns and organizations to advance left-leaning policies … Defendant John Doe has used [Block’s] personal identifying information to benefit the ActBlue Campaigns and circumvent federal requirements prohibiting the use of another person’s name to make political contributions.”
House Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil (R-Wis.) last month referred his findings of “potential criminal activity” to the Republican attorneys general of Arkansas, Florida, Missouri, Texas and Virginia for further investigation.