Barely two weeks to the presidential election, the Wisconsin Republican Party has allegedly lost $2.3 million dollars

     

  Barely two weeks to the presidential election, the Wisconsin Republican Party has allegedly lost $2.3 million dollars to Hackers. The hacking scheme used involved the use of manipulated invoices, the Associated Press reports. 

The party released the theft on October 22nd; according to Wisconsin Republican Party Chairman, Andrew Hitt, the FBI is currently investigating the case.

According to Hitt, the hackers used fake invoices from several campaign vendors working with them.Instead of featuring the vendor’s payment information, the documents relayed the money to the hackers.

This scam methods isn't a new one however as Google suffered a similar blow in 2017.Scammers regularly use fake invoices to target businesses, organizations, and other groups, hoping to sneak in bogus receipts alongside the legitimate ones. Given how frantic managing an election campaign in the final weeks before the election can be, it’s easy to imagine how the scammed invoices might have slipped by.

The AP report doesn’t note how long the hackers were siphoning money off of the account, but the sum is a sizable one, given that Wisconsin Republican spokesman Alec Zimmerman notes that the party’s federal account currently contains $1.1 million (at time of press — that amount will likely change given the fast pace of the election).

Wisconsin is viewed as an essential state for both the Trump and Biden campaigns in the upcoming election.