Slashdot Mirror
Look-Alike Web Sites Hoodwink Republican Donors
Hugh Pickens writes "Shane Goldmacher writes that a network of look-alike campaign websites have netted hundreds of thousands of dollars this year in what some are calling a sophisticated political phishing scheme. The doppelgänger websites have the trappings of official campaign pages: smiling candidate photos and videos, issue pages, and a large red "donate" button at the top and exist for nearly three-dozen prominent GOP figures, including presidential nominee Mitt Romney, House Speaker John Boehner, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and donation magnets such as Reps. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and Allen West of Florida. The only difference is that proceeds from the shadow sites go not to the candidates pictured, but to an obscure conservative group called CAPE PAC run by activist Jeff Loyd, a former chairman of the Gila County GOP in Arizona. 'The only thing they are doing is lining their pockets and funding their own operation,' says Republican political strategist Chris LaCivita. CAPE PAC has a strong Web presence, with over 100,000 followers on Twitter and 50,000 on Facebook and its business model is to buy Google ads — about $290,000 worth, as of the end of June — to promote its network of candidate sites whenever people search for prominent GOP officials. A search for 'Mitt Romney,' for instance, often leads to two sponsored results: Romney's official site and CAPE PAC's mittromneyin2012.com. Once on a CAPE PAC site, users would have to notice fine print at either the top or bottom of the page revealing that they were not on the official page of their favored politician. A dozen donors, including some experienced Washington hands such as Neusner, had no idea they had contributed to the group before National Journal Daily contacted them. 'It confused me, and I do this for a living,' says Washington lobbyist Patrick Raffaniello. 'That's pretty sophisticated phishing.'"
Funny how one slashdot article follows another sometimes.
No, no, what happened is The Free Market (blessed be Its holy name) has decided that these fraudst--sorry, intrepid businessmen at CapePac deserve that money in the marketplace of ideas.
After all, that's the decision that these sucke--sorry, customers have unwittingl--I mean willingly made.
Gotta love all the comments so far. Apparently, when it's a sleazeball in your own party, it's just a single sleazeball (or a handful of them, whatever), not representative of the party. But when it's the other party, it's poetic justice.
No, people, fraud is fraud, deception is deception, no matter which politics they put on their front door, and no matter who they defraud.
If by "liberal", you mean "Allen Greenspan", then yes. He famously, privately averred that the government shouldn't prohibit fraud, that the marketplace would sort it out more efficiently.
So, like most conservatives, you have no fucking idea what you're talking about.
Funny and true! Their name servers show as domaincontrol.com, which is, in fact, GoDaddy.
Ah, I see it's "Restate the joke parent was making, but less subtly and get modded up for it" day.
(ahem)
YES, BECAUSE ACTUAL CRIMINALS ARE MORE MORAL THAN THE REPUBLICAN PARTY! LOL! IT'S A JOKE!!!
Corporate personhood is the root of a lot of evil in our country. I think if corporations want to be people, they need to be properly accountable to our justice system, including the death penalty. They should have to serve jury duty, they should not be allowed to be dual citizens, etc.
Right now corporations are getting mostly the good stuff when it comes to being a person, and the few things they have to suffer with (taxes and some pesky laws), they do their best at bribing politicians to fix. Oh, I mean, donating, not bribing.