A report by non-profit organizations, the Gibson Group of Maryland and Election Watch, has exposed a large-scale money laundering scheme in US political campaigns. This involves the use of “smurfs” – thousands of individuals who make numerous small donations to liberal PACs, committees or directly to candidates’ campaigns, in order to launder large sums of money. The report claims that over $200m has been laundered so far, with many of the smurfs being unaware their names and addresses are being used for donations. Investigation found that the smurfs tend to be primarily white, retired, liberal, and of middle to lower economic class. The use of multiple derivative spellings of names and addresses is a key method of structuring the donations. Some liberal PACs are also bundling up the money from other smurfs and transferring some of it to other PACs or committees. Smurfing is illegal, and if a political campaign received funds illegally, it is required to pay the money back promptly.