ActBlue adopted 'more lenient' donation standards, received foreign money during 2024 election cycle

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.”

The platform also began to monitor potential fraudulent donations from several foreign sources, including hundreds of donations from Brazil, Colombia, India, Iraq, the Philippines and Saudi Arabia, and other countries, an internal memo shows.

“Look out for these donations: Giving to Center for American Progress Action Fund,” the memo reads. “Mostly from Brazilian donors (unlikely to give to this organization).”

You can read the interim report below:

Between September 2022 and November 2024, ActBlue recorded up to 1,900 fraudulent transactions in total, but the report authors claim the suspicious donations are far more “widespread.”

“Altogether, ActBlue’s internal documents and communications paint a damning picture: despite repeated instances of fraudulent donations to Democrat campaigns and causes from domestic and foreign sources, ActBlue is not demonstrating a serious effort to deter fraud on its platform,” the committees concluded.

The committees also floated potential legal consequences stemming from ActBlue’s behaviors identified in the interim report.

“At best, ActBlue’s conduct displays a profound disrespect for the principle that only Americans should decide American elections. At worst, it may violate the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 (FECA), which states that persons who ‘knowingly accept a contribution made by one person in the name of another person’ may face criminal liability.”