A shocking article in the New York Times today and now shooting around the web confirms the until-now unproven accusations (mostly from Right Wing websites) that the Obama campaign is failing to properly investigate - whether purposely or unwittingly - its massive donor rolls and the unprecedented number of names that have donated to the campaign. The Obama campaign always touts as something wonderful the huge amount of individuals donating to the effort in mostly small amounts, proudly announcing some new million-name milestone whenever the fundraising reports are released.

But the NYT has pored over those reports and the lists of names donating to Obama and found truly peculiar donors from equally perplexing locales - all in relatively small amounts that collectively  add up nearly to the cash cap on donations.

Last December, someone using the name “Test Person,� from “Some Place, UT,� made a series of contributions, the largest being $764, to Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign totaling $2,410.07.

Someone identifying himself as “Jockim Alberton,� from 1581 Leroy Avenue in Wilmington, Del., began giving to Mr. Obama last November, contributing $10 and $25 at a time for a total of $445 through the end of February.

The only problem? There is no Leroy Avenue in Wilmington. And Jockim Alberton, who listed his employer and occupation as “Fdsa Fdsa,� does not show up in a search of public records.

An analysis of campaign finance records by The New York Times this week found nearly 3,000 donations to Mr. Obama, the Democratic nominee, from more than a dozen people with apparently fictitious donor information. The contributions represent a tiny fraction of the record $450 million Mr. Obama has raised. But the questionable donations — some donors were listed simply with gibberish for their names — raise concerns about whether the Obama campaign is adequately vetting its unprecedented flood of donors.

It’s important to note that there are donors to most every political campaign that purposefully fake their name and address to preserve anonymity and for general privacy concerns. Finding hundreds of questionable names and addresses among the over 2.5 million individual Obama donors is probably perfectly legitimate.

The donations that raise more ominous questions are those with obviously faked names and addresses, such gibberish that it’s clear these donors were never vetted by the Obama campaign and their donations never returned. These donors made sure to give in several - dozens, even - small amounts, like $10 or $20. That would ensure less attention than a larger gift and allow them to split their donations enough to get the majority of them through whatever investigative process the campaign employs to look through donations. Their small bits of cash eventually added up to sizable numbers, thus allowing them to basically max out their donations twice - once using their real info, the second time faking it all.

This by no means indicates some mass conspiracy among Obama supporters or the campaign to perpetrate fundraising fraud. The campaign has pored through the vast majority on their huge donor lists and has been willing to return any blatantly questionable funds. And the donations from the faked names and addresses only add up to, as the Times article says, “a small portion” of Obama’s overall cash haul.