Some Trump Donors Get Fleeced By 3rd-Party Payment System

According to an article in Maine's WMTW Channel 8, some Donald Trump supporters claim they've ended up giving more than they intended to this campaign, because a since-resolved "glitch" (according to campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks) meant they were charged multiple times. From the article: "Heather Nason of Saco told WMTW News 8 that her husband was one of the affected customers. ... Nason said a series of unauthorized charges appeared on her husband's bank statement days later. She said someone tried to make 13 withdrawals from her husband's account. After the first six charges went through, the account was almost empty."

Comments

Donors???

[chris200x9]

Didn't Trump say he could finance his whole campaign himself?

Re: Donors???

[Anonymous Coward]

He also says Obama is a Muslim and not an American.

What do you call someone who knows the truth, but continues to misrepresent it or to say something that is not true?

Never the less "The Republican front-runner's ..." - front runner?

A narcissistic blowhard clown who inherited his money and wrong back rut four times is the Republican front runner?

So, that's why the Democrats have been singing " We will, we will ROCK YOU!"

Re: Donors???

[ScentCone]

What do you call someone who knows the truth, but continues to misrepresent it or to say something that is not true?

A "Clinton"

Re:Donors???

[TsuruchiBrian]

He will still be looking into getting rid of all the Muslims regardless though, right?

Re: Donors???

[Anonymous Coward]

I think he was referring to Hilary.

1) I only deleted emails to my husband. Bill doesn't use emails.
2) Email server secured in my house by Secret Service, Was in bathroom in Colorado apartment with no alarm system.
3) There were no classified emails. There were classified emails
4) There were no classified emails at the time. There were classified emails at the time.
5) I turned over all relevant emails. Sidney Blumenthal turned over emails from Hilary that were relevant that she failed to turn over.
6) The attack killing Chris Stevens was outrage about a film. State department says she believed differently.

So, I believe the comment was about Hilary more than Bill.

Re:Donors???

[gstoddart]

Honestly, how do you think Trump has gotten himself rich if not by fleecing investors and having shady business partners?

And, really, why would you take him at his word?

My guess is that he's really adept at transferring other people's money into his own pockets. He's got a long history of being a pretty sketchy player and leaving his business partners holding the bag.

Donald Trump seems every bit a complete charlatan and a con man ... he's been failing at business ventures and going bankrupt quite publicly for a long time. And I'm sure he's been leaving a trail of people in his wake who find themselves having been ripped off.

Re:Donors???

[unixisc]

Didn't Trump say he could finance his whole campaign himself?

He did. He does allow people to donate to his campaign, but it requires them to provide a written declaration of 2 things:

1. 1. The person must make the contribution from their own funds, and not any organization that they are a part of (to avoid a situation where Trump is expected to do a quid pro quo)
2. 2. That person couldn't have been an illegal alien at any point in his life

In short, people who wish to contribute to his campaign can do it, as long as they follow the above requirements. But it doesn't mean that Trump wouldn't finance his entire campaign

Re: Donors???

[ScentCone]

Do you know where your e-mail server is? I don't

That means that, unlike her, you didn't personally pay an IT guy from the State Department to come to your house to administer the private server you set up. Of course she knows where the server was at every step along the way: the Clintons are the ones who arranged to have it provisioned, and used it for years.

Classified emails? What if she didn't know they were, it's not like she knows EVERYTHING.

She was the nation's top diplomat. Briefed regularly on security matters, and explicitly on the the handling of sensitive information. EVERY scrap of information that came her way which included things like satellite imagery of foreign nations was "born classified" and is ALWAYS considered such. She knows that, you know that, and everyone else knows that. It's not like she was confused on the subject. She just lied about there being any such information on her server, and of course it turns out it was indeed there, as reported by multiple investigating agencies. Her saying that such messages were never on her personal server is a lie, plain and simple.

Re:Donors???

[tlhIngan]

Didn't Trump say he could finance his whole campaign himself?

Well, he could, but if people are throwing money your way without strings, you'd be stupid not to take it. And given Trump's fortune, being stupid in business is something Trump doesn't do.

If you can spend other people's money instead of your own, it's obvious which is the way to go in business.

Re:Donors???

[AK Marc]

Could, not would.

Also, TFA makes it clear that the person charged didn't donate, or perform any transaction of any kind. He just entered his details so he could, and decided not to, but was charged for about $400 of campaign merchandise.

This was simple theft, though since it was done by a politician/business, it's called an "error" and nothing will come of it, so long as the money is returned in a timely fashion.

Re:Donors???

[davester666]

Yes. It just happens to be the case that some of his money is in your bank account.

Hand it over, punk.

Re:Donors???

[dbIII]

If you can spend other people's money instead of your own, it's obvious which is the way to go in business.

Especially since he's famous for doing that four times over.
Funny how he told the people he had fleeced that he had no money and then he suddenly had millions five minutes after the clock ran out - four times.

Re:Donors???

[Hognoxious]

He is financing it himself. He's just using other people's money. Nothing at all like his business record, no no no.

Re:Donors???

[Barsteward]

seems like a good scam i mean business move, donations replace the money he spends so if he loses the campaign, his pockets are still full

Re:Donors???

[sjames]

That's one of the dirty secrets. When the fabulously wealthy say they are financing something what they mean is they are spending other people's money and taking the credit.

Re:Donors???

[pete6677]

Even funnier yet is the fact that there are apparently still people willing to do business with Trump.

PT Barnum was right...

Re: Donors???

[ScentCone]

Among other people, she was corresponding with one of her personal lackeys, Sidney Blumenthal. He was sending her information about diplomatic affairs and related intelligence in Europe ... mail that she scrubbed out of her records on her personal server before printing out 30,000 messages that she said were everything even remotely to her job as SoS. Of course Blumenthal's emails were found by other means, but missing from her supposedly thorough, years later than required and only under subpoena, transfer of her cherry-picked messages. His were deleted along with tens of thousands of others that she swears were all about yoga classes and wedding plans. And no, there isn't some magical robot that can contextually understand when an email contains sensitive or "born classified" information. That's what TRAINED PEOPLE are for. The CIA, among other agencies reviewing the cherry-picked records she belatedly produced, found classified material in the first few dozen messages they reviewed. As someone trained to know classified when she saw it, and enabled during her job to declare things as classified, she knew exactly what she was doing and what was on her server. Lying about it now is just embarrassing.

Re:Donors???

[thoughtlover]

Honestly, how do you think Trump has gotten himself rich if not by fleecing investors and having shady business partners?

And now everyone can watch the documentary that he sought to destroy. I wonder why... Actually, I don't wonder, especially after watching it. Yes, it's free to watch the entire documentary, too.

http://trumpthemovie.com/watch

Don't worry

[quantaman]

He'll just use his management superpowers to make all the over-charged donors multi-millionaires.

Classic Spammer/Scammer tactic

[Sarusa]

You go after people you know are stupid.

Re:Classic Spammer/Scammer tactic

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it's just an ordinary payment processor glitch that got turned into a media thing due to it happening to the Trump campaign. Similar things have happened to tons and tons of payment platforms enough such that this is hardly a noteworthy affair any more than someone's Windows PC crashing would be.

Please note that, like most sane people, I have zero intention of voting for Trump. But this story is utter BS concocted by someone trying to score political points and it sounds foolish to anyone who knows how payment processors actually work.

3D party?

[anchovy_chekov]

Ah... to look at the world through virtual glasses

Re:3D party?

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately it doesn't work in Linux.

So...

[mcmonkey]

This in addition to getting fleeced by Trump.

prophetic

[Gravis Zero]

i dont see what these people are upset about. i mean, this is just a vision of your future if trump were to be President. ;)

Re:prophetic

[AthanasiusKircher]

i dont see what these people are upset about. i mean, this is just a vision of your future if trump were to be President. ;)

Agreed. How is this a surprise? I'm sure the Trump campaign just used the same formula for calculating donations that it uses to calculate Trump's net worth -- take the actual value and multiply it by some random number. After all, Trump's "brand" is apparently worth billions of dollars, but Trump's the only one who thinks so.

Hey Trump donors -- you just figured out how math works in Trump's world.

Only six?

[TsuruchiBrian]

She said someone tried to make 13 withdrawals from her husband's account. After the first six charges went through, the account was almost empty.

That's because her husband is a loser, and doesn't have many billions of dollars from doing very well in his many business deals.

Re: Only six?

[shitzu]

Strange. Does the american banking system allow you to "charge" another person's bank account without any sayso of the user? Where i live, this is impossible. The only way money goes away from my bank account by a request from third party, is direct debit - and even then I set the withdrawal limits and dates and there has to be an electronic (i.e. XML) invoice produced. Also - i don't think direct debit is ever used for one off payments here, only recurring payments like utility, phone, etc.

Re: Only six?

[shitzu]

Cards - yes - that is how cards work. But they are talking about a "withdrawal from her husband's bank account".

Re: Only six?

[Zero__Kelvin]

Google Debit Card.

Re: Only six?

[kbdd]

Yes of course. I had a closed account that was charged almost a year after being closed via a fubared electronic transaction and the bank still expected me to pay even though I had not been their customer for almost a year. It took me 3 trips to the bank and many phone calls to get them to drop the case.

I was told you cannot close an account, ever, for merchants. When you "close" it, you only essentially tell the bank that you no longer want to get statements, and they will stop charging you the monthly maintenance fee. Also, if you do write a check after "closing" the account, they will deny the payment (I guess that is bank dependent) but in all cases you will be charged an overdraft fee. Once you open an account, it will be there for life and even through death it will be passed to your heirs.

They apparently have no mechanism to filter an incoming electronic debit request when the account is closed because they keep the account number in their logs. Closing an account is not "deleting" an account.

Re: Only six?

[Antique Geekmeister]

It doesn't "allow" unauthorized transactions. That's why such theft is called "wire fraud". And using your credentials, fraudulently, would allow just such theft: it's quite a common problem, often tied to the related criminal activities of "identity theft".

I've no idea where you live that such fraud is not an ongoing problem. And in this case, there's so little information that it could even have been an old paper check, forged with Donald's signature. In the USA, ongoing fraud of this sort will eventually bring the attention of the Secret Service, whose primary role ias as agents of the U.S. Treasury. It takes a great deal of such fraud to get them to take an active interest. But for fraud involving Donald Trump's personal finances? I'd assume they'd respond quite a lot faster than they do for normal identity theft crimes.

Re: Only six?

[sjames]

They clearly have such a mechanism since you can't just bleed the bank dry if you get the account number of a deceased customer with no living relatives for them to tap. They just opt to be accomplices to a crime for their cut and take advantage of being too big to prosecute. That's why they are deathly afraid of anything that might change their status. They've forgotten how to make an honest living.

Re: Only six?

[kbdd]

That is where you are wrong. All you need is the information from a debit card and you can drain any account completely dry, owner being alive or not. It is called "incoming debit electronic transaction" and you are presumed to have authorized it by giving your debit card number to someone.

Re: Only six?

[sjames]

Oh, you can bleed the account dry, no problem. What I mean is that they DO have a mechanism to keep you from overdrawing it, but they only use it when there is nobody they can put the bite on to cover the debt.

Re: Only six?

[david_thornley]

Faked credentials. I can transfer money out of my account from a web site, and have done so. If I can do it over the web, so can anyone else who can copy my credentials (and perhaps spoof my IP address). I have used such money transfer for one-time payments without previous setup (although most of our recurring bills are paid by recurring money transfers we've set up).

Re:Your Momsors???

[PopeRatzo]

Your mom is one of my favorite sluts. Damn, your mom's such a slut!

Mr Trump, don't you have better things to be doing with your time than commenting on Slashdot?

Heh, People

[towermac]

More like person. And check out the garage over the woman's shoulder. Hoarders. It's only plural people because somebody at the Trump campaign instantly copped to it, and used the plural word customers; so apparently more than one person.

Everywhere I look these past few days there is nothing but piling on Trump. Honestly, I never expected him to bring the country together like this. Both left wing and right wing media alike really have it in for him. It's every story, everywhere. I never saw them so together on something, not even in the days after 9/11; not like this.

Interesting times...

Re:Heh, People

[TsuruchiBrian]

Everywhere I look these past few days there is nothing but piling on Trump. Honestly, I never expected him to bring the country together like this. Both left wing and right wing media alike really have it in for him.

Yeah it's weird. Usually republicans will reflexively support anything the democrats oppose. Democrats hate Putin? Well then republicans love him. He is a strong leader, not like Obama (who is like a very weak Stalin and Hitler).

Re:Heh, People

[Chris Mattern]

Everywhere I look these past few days there is nothing but piling on Trump.

Are claiming he doesn't completely deserve it?

Re:Heh, People

[drinkypoo]

Everywhere I look these past few days there is nothing but piling on Trump. Honestly, I never expected him to bring the country together like this. Both left wing and right wing media alike really have it in for him.

Trump and Sanders are both threats to the media. Trump is a threat because they can't control or predict him. Sanders is a threat because he challenges their whole order. So they're attacking trump and ignoring Sanders.

Re:Heh, People

[Okian Warrior]

Honestly, I never expected him to bring the country together like this. Both left wing and right wing media alike really have it in for him. It's every story, everywhere. I never saw them so together on something, not even in the days after 9/11; not like this.

Interesting times...

It's even worse.

Most of the post-debate polls have Trump increasing his lead over the other candidates.

Looking at some of the article post responses over the net (my own anecdotal evidence), it seems that people really don't mind all the things people complain about Trump. The general tone of response is "I agree he's $X, but at least he's not like those corrupt politicians".

And at least one super PAC has declared war on Trump.

All he has to do is choose a handful of issues that piss people off, and he'll be unstoppable.

Probably just saying that he'd fix the economy and give people jobs would do it.

Re: Heh, People

[Anonymous Coward]

In Brazil we have a saying for this... He is the "piranha bull". When you have to move massive amounts of cattle through a piranha infested river you sacrifice a signore bull so that the rest of the heard can cross without being noticed. This is the purpose trump serves. He diverts the attention from all the other candidates. Everyone's looking at him! If another candidate says something that doesn't poll well it'll only get limited air time and the campaign will learn something with little side effect.

This is a very smart strategy!

Re:Why is Trump not in prison?

[HiThere]

More to the point, because he's a presidential candidate in a major party. Hillary is also still free, and there's been much more time to prosecute her.

That said, I'm not totally sure that either of them actually committed a crime. IANAL. It seems to be that they both did, and I would be surprised if either of them was prosecuted.

moo

[thinkwaitfast]

that mooo guy is makig more sense on /. all the time

How is this different from normal?

[gurps_npc]

Trump is by his own words one of the richest men around. He owns all the big stuff.

Giving him ANY money at all seems like a stupid thing to do. It's like giving a drowning man a glass of water.

Re:How is this different from normal?

[Irate Engineer]

Giving him ANY money at all seems like a stupid thing to do. It's like giving a drowning man a glass of water.

It's more like giving an alcoholic a shot of whiskey. He has enough, but one more won't hurt.

Re:How is this different from normal?

[dbIII]

Have a shower. Before you put your clothes on pick up a dollar. You are now worth more than Trump four times over. The money he has now is less than he was supposed to pay back but did not.

2D for life, yo!

[jtownatpunk.net]

This is why I only use 2D payment systems. I'm not paying extra for those silly glasses.

Re:Your Momsors???

[AMMalena]

Hmm. I didn't realize how much I wished Slashdot had an IQ requirement.

A totally uninteresting article

[nickweller]

Why is this even doing on slashdot?

Re:But it's Trump

[penguinoid]

vOTE tRUMP!

Re:Muzzie Obama

[belthize]

What a special kind of conspiratorial stupid you are.

They also happen to be pretty much the same policies as every damn president since Truman. Don't mistake rhetoric about what folks "Would have done if they'd been in charge" with what they actually would have done.

Re:The scary part is

[AK Marc]

Trump/Palin 2016!

Ob

[Hognoxious]

Shouldn't that be "Some Trump Donors Get Fleeced Again By 3d-Party Payment System"

Re:Ob

[mjwx]

Shouldn't that be "Some Trump Donors Get Fleeced Again By 3d-Party Payment System"

I would have called it "Unrestricted Capitalism In Action" or "How Libertarianism Really Work" because lets face it, the only thing stopping this from being legal is the fact the government places restrictions on it.

Re:Ob

[Hognoxious]

I'm sure the libertardians have a solution to that. Probably involving the ripped-off person going round and shooting him.

Fleeced?

[Hognoxious]

Fleeced? I wonder if the pun's intentional. I always thought it looked more like a dead cat, but I suppose it could be a bit of sheepskin.

Re:Muzzie Obama

[Barsteward]

its like all Abrahamic religions. freedoms/exceptions to law etc only relate to the predominant religion of the state

Re:Why is Trump not in prison?

[Barsteward]

he isn't white... he's orange

Re:The scary part is

[dunkelfalke]

Honestly, I'd love to see this. From a safe distance, obviously. Would be a lot of fun to watch.

poetic justice

[Spaham]

A fool and his money will soon be parted

somehow you are surprised?

[kbdd]

When you give to Trump's political campaign, you are being overcharged, no matter how much you give and how many time. Now, if you give for the entertainment value, you get back many times what you give. Now you know.

Re:The scary part is

[AK Marc]

If that combination wins, there is no safe distance.

Re:Muzzie Obama

[unixisc]

It's not illegal, but the point people are making is that the questioner in Trump's town hall meeting made a false claim. Debatable one, maybe, but certainly not downright false.

Re:The scary part is

[dunkelfalke]

You think so? I had the impression that they both are pretty isolationist.

Re:The scary part is

[AK Marc]

Nope. Trump is "isolationist" in that he'll tell our allies to go fuck themselves. But when a mess happens, he'll not hesitate to "look decisive" with aggressive military action.

Sadly, I think his foreign policy (when it comes to military) would be quite similar to my ideal. Pull back the armed forces, and deploy when needed. But his diplomatic policy would be nearly the opposite of mine. We don't need to keep so many military on foreign bases. We are spread all over the world planning on invasions of the Middle East, Russia, Indonesia, and other threats and "potential threats". But I can't see Trump trying to get Iran to a negotiating table. Or trying to solve a problem like ISIS.

Re: Your Momsors???

[Dominare]

The court that convicted him was a Sanhedrin, which is a jewish.

well,

[gzuckier]

LOOOOSERS!!!

Re:One could say...

[gzuckier]

... that they got hit with trumped up charges!

I shoot my rim at you.

Re:Muzzie Obama

[unixisc]

Problem is that it's an ultimate goal of an indeterminate number of Muslims. A lot of countries had their constitutions subverted once they became Muslim majorities - like Malaysia. That's not a problem w/ people of other religions - be it Christianity, Buddhism, Shintoism, Hinduism, Taoism, et al, which is why people are right to bring this issue up