A credit card belonging to the Friends of Matt Gates political action committee, which
of course is the name implies as a Matt gae fundraising, uh, uh, uh, operation. They recently
had their credit card number stolen and the thief decided to go on a bit of a, I guess
we'll call it a mini spending spree at Apple because they only spent, you know, $364 with
the stolen credit card. But they spent it all at the Apple store and in their campaign
filings last week, friends of Matt Gates had to admit like, yeah, hey, um, oopsy, we, we,
we lost our card number and it got stolen. So these aren't really our charges and they're
gonna get reversed. We just, and when they do, we're gonna submit like the filing showing
they were reversed. So don't hold it against us that we don't have receipts for these things,
cuz it was totally the card being stolen.
Now I will say I do 100% believe them that the card number got stolen. And again, I don't
even actually know if it was the card number or the card itself. Either way, fraudulent
charges, they shouldn't have a problem. But what is a problem, of course, is that this
isn't the first time this year that thieves have managed to get their hands on a campaign,
fundraising arms credit card. In fact, in recent months, this is actually the fourth
time that this has happened. And there's a very clear reason why thieves are starting
to target this. They know that these campaign fight, they, the Super pacs, the pacs, whatever
it is, they have millions and millions of dollars. Okay? You're talking about these
massive accounts that for the most part are not monitored every single day like your personal
bank account would be, right? So a thief steals your bank card, they go out there and they
start making purchases.
What's gonna happen? You're either gonna get a notification from your bank immediately.
I know that's what's happened the few times it's happened to me. And they'll say like,
Hey, here's a weird charge. Is this you? And you say No. Also, if you're like me checking
your bank account every day just to see what you got in there, make sure everything's okay,
you would notice fraudulent charges probably within, you know, 24 to 12 hours when you're
talking about a campaign arm that has millions of dollars and is spending money on all kinds
of things, whether it's food, travel, computers, stereo equipment, liquor, none of those is
gonna set off those flags with those banks like a, like it would with a personal credit
card. So thieves can just have all kinds of fun before they even get caught. And as I
mentioned, we already have four people in the last couple months that this has happened
to and, and, and I do think it's worth noting, not sure if this is part of a pattern or if
it's just dumb luck, but all four of those people, including
Matt Gates, obviously Republicans, so thieves are targeting Republican members of Congress,
their campaign arms and stealing their numbers and spending all their money. So I'm not sure
if maybe it's because Republicans just have worse security if they're the ones not looking
over their own shoulders to make sure their campaign finances are all on track. Or maybe
it's because the thieves think, Hey, Republicans get more money. They got all that corporate
money coming in, maybe we'll get a piece of that. Whatever it is. I think Republicans,
you need to start paying a little bit more attention to your finances before you have
this massive headache of trying to explain to the F E C that, oops, we had our card number
stolen, but don't worry, we're totally gonna file everything the way it's supposed to be.
Once we get all that money back, it's much easier to just keep checking those accounts,
make sure everything's on the level, rather than having to go back a couple months later
and say, uhoh, this doesn't add up.