The progressive fundraising platform ActBlue changed its donation policies twice during the 2024 election cycle to make its standards “more lenient” and received donations from foreign sources, a congressional investigation has found.
Three House Committees launched probes last year after reviewing evidence that the platform accepted donations from foreign sources and employed lax verification standards.
“Internal documents produced to the Committees by ActBlue and its fraud-prevention contractor, Sift, demonstrate a lack of commitment to stopping fraud and paint a picture of complacency on ActBlue’s fraud-prevention team,” the committees concluded in an interim report made public on Wednesday.
“Put simply, the documents reflect a fundamentally unserious approach to fraud prevention at ActBlue—one that has left the door open for large-scale fraud campaigns on Democrats’ top fundraising platform.”
During the 2024 campaign cycle, according to internal company documents reviewed by the committee, ActBlue issued new standards encouraging staff to “look for reasons to accept contributions.” Before this policy change, the platform already failed to require CVV numbers for credit card transactions, increasing fraud risks, the committees previously found.
An internal assessment from the company, the investigation found, determined the policy change led to “between 14 and 28 additional fraudulent contributions each month.”