According to Federal Election Commission (FEC) records, Gerald McAteer, an unemployed man in Franklin, Tennessee, made 2,629 individual contributions to Democrat PAC ActBlue, totaling $15,928.24, since the beginning of 2024.
At the time of this writing, McAteer, over the past 588 days, has contributed to ActBlue an average of 4.47 times per day for an average of just over $6 per donation, or a little more than $27 per day.
Most, if not all, of the donations are suspected “ghost donations” made fraudulently on behalf of McAteer, likely without his knowledge.
The company is facing increased scrutiny that it might be laundering foreign donations or other nefarious donations through unknowing people. It has also been flagged for suspiciously not collecting three-digit security CVV codes from donors’ credit cards, which, in theory, means that donations could be made with prepaid debit cards.
The Tennessee Star reached out to a phone number associated with McAteer, but it was disconnected.
The Star reported Monday on another anomalous donation pattern to the PAC made by Margaret Maher, a 68-year-old woman who is also listed as “Not Employed.”
According to documents filed with the FEC, she has donated almost $33,000 to ActBlue, the left-wing’s largest PAC.
Maher made a total of 4,200 individual donations over the past 20 months.
When attempting to reach her for contact, The Star found that her phone, too, was disconnected.
ActBlue has not returned any comment requests from The Star.
Numerous elected officials, like Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), have demanded FEC investigations into ActBlue’s potential fraud, but the FEC has yet to take action.
“It should come as no surprise that ActBlue serves as a vessel for fraud, considering the intentional lack of security engrained within their donation processes and systems,” Rubio said last year.
In the coming days, The Star will continue investigating the “ghost donations” allegedly made by five other Tennesseans. Each supposedly donated to ActBlue more than 1,000 times in the past 588 days.
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Peter D’Abrosca is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Peter on Twitter/X.
Background Photo “ActBlue Website” by ActBlue.
Corrupt democrats. But I repeat myself.