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Suspect Donations Raise More Fund-Raising Questions
WASHINGTON (AllPolitics, Dec. 31) -- The Democratic National Committee is reviewing a $12,500 contribution made by a woman who made false claims of being a doctor and sold aspirin as a cancer cure for $160 a bottle, the New York Daily News reported today.
DNC Spokeswoman Amy Weiss Tobe confirmed the committee is looking into the contribution by Aiwah Qi as part of its internal review begun last November.
The DNC has been conducting an internal review as a mushrooming number of illegal or questionable donations have been discovered. The money from Qi was raised at a DNC event organized by controversial fund-raiser John Huang.
According the Daily News, Qi was photographed with the president at the May fund-raiser at Washington's Sheraton Carlton Hotel while holding up a bottle of her phony pills. The photographer hired by the DNC was asked to relinquish the film and the White House has since refused release the photo, the Daily News reported.
About a month later, Qi was the subject of a Daily News expose which at the time did not make the connection to the president but highlighted her false claims of being a doctor and her $160 aspirin cancer cure.
Following the newspaper's story, Qi was fined $1,000 by New York City's Department of Consumer Affairs for falsely advertising herself as a doctor in Chinese-language papers.
CNN'S Tim McCaughan contributed to this report