Some election integrity researchers are expanding their investigation of politicians who benefitted from questionable “Smurfing” campaign contributions and discovered that Senator Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) received many of them. Smurfing refers to using straw donors to make campaign contributions; usually, elderly and unemployed people are unaware their identities are being used for money laundering. Many contributions are made under one name, sometimes thousands of them, and they are usually small amounts, often around $10 each, to escape detection.
Peter Bernegger, one of the key researchers who discovered the Smurfing phenomenon, posted on X on Tuesday, “Arizona @SenRubenGallego caught Smurfing, i.e. criminally laundering money into his campaign! Note that this is just the tip of the iceberg. This is a ‘quick’ data run of the top Smurfs found to have had their identities stolen by Gallego’s campaign. Smurfing found by Chris Gleason @immutablechrist Phillip Allison @TheTVConsPiracy , myself and others exposing Smurfing. This is another form of election fraud. We are running all 100 US Senators, Tom Cotton and Jon Ossoff already ran – see the tweets below.”
He included screenshots of campaign finance records showing a list of 20 individuals who had contributed an extremely large number of donations to Gallego, averaging around $10 each. Most of the contributors did not live in Arizona. Stephen Pilder of Pennsylvania contributed the most, 2,004 times, averaging $6.37 for each donation.
In another post revealing Smurfs who donated to Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Bernegger asked, “Where is the FEC?” In a follow-up comment, he accused the agency, “The FEC is in on it, big time.”
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