Donation Campaign Scams

Whenever there is a high profile natural disaster there are spammer scanners too. And after the Haitian earthquake tragedy the scammers have descended on the Internet in an all out effort to dupe people into sending them money that they claim is intended for victims. The most successful swindle was an e-mail that said it came from the British Red Cross. It asked readers to send 250 British pounds or more, included the address of the Red Cross in London and implored that donations be wired there by Western Union. But the e-mail contact for the British Red Cross was wrong, and the Red Cross organization does not collect donations using Western Union. Chalk up a huge profit for the crooks on that one. They made huge amounts of money with that ploy.Besides that single scam there are hundreds more of the "donate to Haiti relief fund" scams out there on line. Cybercrooks are also manipulating online searches so that results for terms such as "Haitian relief fund" and "Haiti donations" direct people to phishing sites or pages infected with viruses like malware. And there are the phony web sites that ask for money also. Most of those last short term, as the inevitable discovery of the fraud quickly shuts them down. But they do collect a huge amount of money from the gullible donators before that happens. I remember the many similar scams after Hurricane Katrina destroyed so much of this area.

It brings to question, "Why do so many people fall for those donation appeals?" I think one reason is the basic goodness of humans and the instinct to help others after a disaster. People become caught up in the emotions of the story, the video, the media blitz and rush to give before thinking about who the agent for their cash actually is. The same kind of phony con is frequent off line too. So many donation campaigns are out-right fraudulent or wasteful (sometimes more money is kept by the appealing party than given to the victims) one would think people would be more careful about handing out money. They are not.

I never give money to a solicitor of whom I have no knowledge. That means no street donations and no donations for those organizations I haven't checked as to their validity and as to how much of the total donation actually reaches the intended person in need. I always tell solicitors that before I will give to their cause they must snail mail me their organization information, including the required financial disclosure statement. None has ever complied!

As for on-line donation sites, for me there are too many phony ones to even consider donating that way. But most legitimate organizations recommend the following when solicited on line:
Don't respond to unsolicited e-mail or click on links contained within those messages
Make contributions directly to established organizations
Be wary of claims that 100% of donations will assist victims
Do not give your personal or financial information to anyone soliciting contributions.

Oh, by the way....can you send me a few dollars for the "Keep Me Ranting " campaign? It's a worthwhile cause