Refund of Palestinian donations not reported due to “technical error”

In an update last night to Aaron Klein’s August 4, 2008, article about the Palestinian Gazan brothers who managed to donate $33,000 in illegal foreign campaign donations via the internet to Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.)’s campaign, Glenn R. Simpson of the Wall Street Journal’s Washington Wire wrote that the Obama campaign had returned the donations but it was not reported on FEC records due to a “technical error”.

The brothers sought to buy “Obama for President” T-shirts in some 97 attempts, 32 of which were initially successful.

They wrongly identified themselves as American citizens, campaign officials said, and listed their address as “GA”, the abbreviation for Georgia, when in fact they live in a refugee camp in Gaza, a rump city-state between Israel and Egypt that is under the control of Hamas.

The donations came in between Sept. 20 and Dec. 6 and virtually all of the money, about $33,500, was returned by December 6. But the refunds weren’t reported to the Federal Election Commission due to a technical error, campaign officials said.

The remaining $2,500 was refunded Monday. The refunds will all be reflected shortly in an amended report. New controls to prevent such attempts are now in place, the campaign said.

So, now we are left with the question of how much more money that has allegedly been refunded has not been reported to the FEC due to a “technical error” or two or ten or a hundred or more?