'A complete ripoff': Campaign finance experts puzzled and stunned by Trump camp's reported 'money...

Elderly donors who gave a few hundred dollars to former President Donald Donald Trump's reelection campaign were shocked to see thousands drained from their accounts. Refund requests spiked in the final months of the campaign. The ensuing surges in credit card fraud claims associated with Trump even got on the radar of the US' biggest banks.

A New York Times investigation published Saturday detailed a recurring donation scheme reportedly referred to as "the money bomb" that the Trump campaign used to pad its coffers in the final months of the campaign through the GOP fundraising platform WinRed.

The tactics included added pre-checked recurring donation boxes at the bottom of fundraising emails and creating an opt-out instead of opt-in system for recurring donations. And as time drew closer to the election, the fine print by those bright-yellow donation boxes became smaller and more confusing, leading to donors, including many elderly ones, unknowingly signing up to give thousands in contributions.

The payments, according to The Times, essentially functioned as an "interest-free loan" from Trump's donors to his campaign, which faced upheaval and financial turmoil in the months leading up to the November 3 election. Eventually, tens of millions of donations were refunded over the course of 2020, with WinRed pocketing the transaction fees.