Deseret News is reporting that Andrew Yang pulled off a fundraising coup following the Democratic debate earlier this week. But, has he broken the campaign finance law – and more importantly, did he really do anything wrong?

This will very probably has lots of polarizing opinions – but, political affiliations aside, has Andrew Yang just pulled off a genius marketing move?

As surprises go, Andrew Yang’s decision to announce at the Democratic debate he’d be giving away $1000 A Month to Ten American families ($120000 in total) over the next year ranks up there. Yang’s proposed solution is a universal basic income program which he calls “The Freedom Dividend,” and it seems he’s gone and put his money where his mouth is with the announcement. While the campaign finance jury is out, there’s no doubt that the giveaway has led to an increase is Yang’s campaign funds, as well as a hike in his followers.

It's reported that Yang had raised an impressive $1 Million in Donations with an increase of 450,000 Email Subscribers after announcing his (debatably) clever Marketing Stunt at the Democratic Debate. He’s also seen a boost to his Twitter following which has eclipsed the amount of any of the other candidates in the debate.

While this is certainly unconventional, and possibly illegal, in terms of a political fundraising method – when you look at this in terms of pure marketing, it’s perhaps harder to argue with it. He's turning a tremendous ROI with just a fraction of the marketing spend compared to the millions of dollars the other political candidates are spending on television, digital advertisements and paying the media. He’s turning a profit in terms of cold hard cash, while giving back to people too.

Where Yang could fall foul of the regulators is in terms of campaign finance law, and former FEC attorney Erin Chlopak, who is the director of campaign finance strategy at the Campaign Legal Center saidTime Magazine that there may be some trouble ahead for Yang.

“Handing out money to individuals for their own personal use would seem to be a violation of campaign-finance law. It’s hard for me to envision how taking campaign funds and just handing it out to individuals would not violate the personal use prohibition.”

Despite legal concerns, this initiative seems to have peaked the interest of other tech entrepreneurs like Justin Sun (CEO of BitTorrent) who has expressed interest in taking Yang's giveaway even further by offering to finance 100 more US Citizens with UBI for a year (approx. $1.2 Million).

I’m fascinated by Yang’s move from a marketing perspective, as this stunt has resulted in an amazing ROI from all the media coverage, traffic growth, donations and new email subscribers. Would love to hear what you guys think about this!