The ongoing efforts to tally the results of the US presidential election have apparently witnessed the emergence of a potential controversy in Pennsylvania as The Buffalo Chronicle claims that a Philadelphia mob boss known as "Skinny Joey" Merlino might've been a participant of an alleged scheme involving the manufacturing of "some 300,000 election ballots marked for Biden".
According to the media outlet, one source alleged that Merlino and "a lean team of associates" produced those ballots "at a rate of $10 per ballot — a whopping $3 million for three days of work", with the ballots then being "packaged into non-descript cardboard boxes and dropped off outside the Philadelphia Convention Center".
The ballots were allegedly picked up by Merlino at "two private households where a trusted handful of associates were busily marking ballots with Sharpie markers", with them being paid “more than $1,000 per hour, often producing thousands of ballots every hour for more than 60 nearly-consecutive hours", the media outlet adds, citing sources that spoke "on the condition of anonymity".
And now, Merlino reportedly may be willing to "flip on Biden" and provide a "primetime Congressional testimony" on behalf of US President Donald Trump.
The story however, has already been branded as false by Snopes and Politifact, who argue that there's simply no evidence to support such claims, while the BBC quotes Merlino's lawyers as saying that his client "denies all the allegations" and "would rather die than ever be a snitch".
Previously, Republicans Mike Kelly and Sean Parnell filed a lawsuit to the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania requesting to declare universal voting by mail unconstitutional and deny the majority of Pennsylvanian votes in the US election cast by mail.
While Democratic candidate Joe Biden has been projected as president-elect by all major US media in 2020 US presidential election, his rival and current POTUS Donald Trump insists that he is the one who won.
Arguing that the electoral victory was stolen from him via massive fraud and acts of impropriety on behalf of the Democrats,Trump has initiated audits and recounts in several states.