Rep. Mary Peltola’s name appears in a lawsuit filed by the America First Policy Institute against a “John Doe” who made numerous donations to Democrat political campaigns, including hers.

Mark Block, a Republican consultant, said he discovered an old email account he used while working on Herman Cain’s 2012 presidential campaign had been used to donate to ActBlue, a major Democrat fundraising platform that has been the subject of congressional investigations for using fake accounts to channel money. When he checked the account, he found hundreds of receipts being sent there by ActBlue for donations supposedly made by him.

In the lawsuit filed in Wisconsin state court this week, Block says he is the victim of identity theft in a conspiracy that uses ActBlue as a mule for money — and for possible overseas donations from unknown actors.

Numerous Democrats politicians received money from the account that he claims was orphaned by him. They include Mary Peltola’s campaign and joint fundraising committee.

When conservative activist James O’Keefe of O’Keefe Media Group investigated the company earlier this year, he interviewed dozens of Americans who had never donated to Democrat candidates, but whose names and identities were being logged into the ActBlue online system, showing them making hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations. Many of these ActBlue victims were retired people on a fixed income who told O’Keefe they had no ability to have made such donations.

Democrats in Alaska, such as Peltola, use the ActBlue system for online donations every day. In fact, an Anchorage man who was arrested last month for threatening conservative Supreme Court justices had used ActBlue to donate to Peltola’s campaign, as well as to President Joe Biden’s campaign. 

The amounts donated through mule accounts are often very small and go under the radar of the Federal Elections Commission, which does not monitor small donations to political campaigns. In this way, the system has gone under the radar for years, becoming a behemoth in campaign donation funneling that has allowed Democrat candidates to vastly outperform the Republicans. The small donations add up. In Block’s case, over $800 was donated through the use of his old email address, and his is just one of millions of possible accounts being uses.

“For example, within a day of Vice President Harris taking over President Biden’s campaign, she received $81 million from 888,000 grassroots donors; this total quickly swelled to more than $310 million by the end of the month. Harris campaign spokesman Kevin Munoz stated that these donations represent ‘exactly the kind of grassroots energy and enthusiasm that wins elections,'” the lawsuit explained.

“Unfortunately, however, at least some of those donations—and similar donations to campaigns and organizations across the country—have been fraudulently made,” it continued. In the exhibit attached to the lawsuit were names of numerous Democrat candidates — among them Peltola — who had received tiny donations from the Mark Block email address.

Starting in May of 2024, Block’s account was used to make over $884 in donations to 62 campaigns and political groups. The Harris Victory Fund got 35 of the donations linked to his account.

“Plaintiff did not make, authorize, or consent to these donations to the ActBlue Campaigns, and the Defendant’s unlawful acts could expose Plaintiff to investigation by the FEC for contributions made under a false name,” the lawsuit said.

“While these fraudulent donations average out to a very small $3.24 per transaction, they fit nicely into a loophole created by Federal Election Commission (FEC) reporting requirements,” the complaint added.

For example, the Mary Peltola Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee shared with Alaska Democratic Party, received $2.40 from the account owned by Mark Block on the same day the account supposedly gave Sherrod Brown, and Jon Tester, and the Harris Victory Fund similar small amounts. Peltola’s campaign itself received $2.60 on Sept. 12 from whoever is using Block’s email address.

The activity associated with fraudulent use of identities for political online donations described as “smurfing,” and is considered a form of identity theft. People with abandoned email accounts may find that those are being used to funnel money to campaigns without their knowledge. One Alaskan who spoke with Must Read Alaska said one of his old accounts had been used by ActBlue in a similar way. But most Americans don’t have the financial resources to litigate such matters.

“Specifically, federal law does not require campaigns to itemize contributions from donors when the aggregate amount totals less than $200. Campaigns that receive contributions below $200 can simply bundle the donation into a list of un-itemized contributions. Small dollar donations have seen explosive growth in recent years, with the number of reported transactions increasing by 400% just between the 2016 and 2020 elections,” the lawsuit said.

“Bad actors can influence elections by laundering their ‘smurfing’ activities (i.e., making contributions via the PII [personal identifiable information] of numerous donors or ‘smurfs’) through these anonymous bulk reports. Since FEC data on small-dollar donors is organized by donor rather than campaign, someone would first have to know or suspect who a ‘smurf’ might be before a record search would reveal a pattern of structured fraudulent donations. Unless of course that bad actor was like the John Doe in this case, and made the critical mistake of using the Plaintiff’s PII to launder fraudulent campaign contributions,” the lawsuit said.

The House Committee on Oversight and Accountability is investigating reports of potentially fraudulent and illicit financial activity related to contributions to campaigns of candidates for federal offices mediated by online fundraising platforms like ActBlue.

“Recent reports about ActBlue raise concerns about the threat of fraud and evasion of campaign finance law by individuals exploiting online contribution platforms. ActBlue had not implemented standard procedures to guard against identity theft and fraud such as requiring a Card Verification Value (CVV) to process online transactions until it received criticism for not doing so. ActBlue is also being investigated by several states’ officials in relation to contributions allegedly made through the platform fraudulently without the reported contributor’s awareness. Federal law prohibits contributions made in the name of another person,” the House Oversight Committee explained.

“The Committee is concerned that failure to properly vet contributions made through online platforms may have allowed bad actors to more easily commit fraud to illegally exploit and violate federal campaign finance laws. These bad actors could include foreign nationals not lawfully admitted for permanent residence who are prohibited by statute from contributing to campaigns or political parties. They could also include individuals looking to flout the limits of individual contributions by fraudulently using others’ identities to evade those limits, in addition to other criminal activity in violation of campaign finance laws,” the committee said in a letter to the Department of Treasury. “It is imperative that Congress determine whether legislation is necessary to ensure adherence to statutes related to campaign finance, and guard against foreign or unfair influence in our elections.”