The records make clear that the group was more than just a loose collection of friends, family and co-workers that bundlers typically rely on when raising money for a candidate. Rather, each person had a direct financial relationship with Mr. Hsu, either receiving money from his company or paying into it, even though many of them appear to have other jobs or businesses independent of him. The purpose of the payments, and whether they related to business costs, fees or expenses, is unclear.
The records included a bank statement and a set of canceled checks for Components Ltd. that were made available to The New York Times for review by someone associated with Mr. Hsu. Because they covered only a single month in 2003, it could not be determined if the pattern of payments to the nine people was a singular occurrence, or continued closer in proximity to the hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions that Mr. Hsu eventually bundled.
The timing of Mr. Hsu’s payments is important because federal law sets a $2,300 limit on individual contributions to presidential campaigns and bars fund-raisers from reimbursing donors.
The Hsu case has raised questions about campaigns’ use of bundlers to raise money. Mrs. Clinton’s campaign has donated to charity $23,000 that Mr. Hsu had given it, and is reviewing other contributions he raised.
The records show that during that one-month period, Components Ltd. took in close to $600,000, about a third of it wired to the company’s account by two people in California and New York who also were part of Mr. Hsu’s circle of campaign contributors. At the same time, the company issued checks and wire transfers totaling $660,000, much of it to the same group of people, including two checks for more than $100,000 apiece that bounced because of insufficient funds.
On Friday, a lawyer for Mr. Hsu, E. Lawrence Barcella of Washington, declined to comment on the financial records. He has said that Mr. Hsu never provided money to anyone to make contributions.
Mr. Hsu’s financial affairs have remained shrouded in mystery since it became known last month that there was an outstanding warrant for his arrest from his failure to appear in court in San Mateo County, Calif., in 1992. Bankrupt and recently divorced at the time, he had been facing up to three years in prison for a fraud conviction a year earlier. According to court records from the case, Mr. Hsu ran a Ponzi scheme that took in cash from dozens of investors and returned profits to some of them before shutting down with more than $1 million missing.
It appears that Mr. Hsu, an American citizen with experience in the garment trade, fled to his native Hong Kong, where he formed new businesses. But court records there show that in 1998 he was once again pushed into bankruptcy by a creditor, whose identity is shielded by Hong Kong privacy laws, and he emerged from bankruptcy only last year.
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