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Charity Request Scam

Introduction

The Charity Request/Disaster Relief scam is becoming far more prevalent these days. Here you will receive an email that generally purports to be forwarded from someone else. The email describes the plight of a place or peoples hit by various disasters wars/drought/earthquakes or tsunami. Generally the place and disaster are all true but the person requesting that you make a donation for aid is a complete hoaxter.

How it Works

Tragic events such as the Indonesian tsunami, hurricane Catrina in the US and the tragedy of Darfour are in the news and the public consciousness these days. These are all tragic events where people die, lose their loved ones, or everything they have. It is a natural and worthy human desire to help those who are suffering. Scammers prey on this by sending fake emails desiring donations or they set-up fake charity websites and steal the money donated to the victims of disasters.

Here is an example of the kind of email that you might receive:

Scam email starts:

From: info@tsunami-relief.org
Subject: fwd: please help tsunami relief
Date: 11 Jan 2005 07:29:26 BDT
To: dyfed7@email.com
Reply-To:

Dear Sir/Madam,

We are from a small village in the Aceh Region in Indonesia affected by the recent Tsunami Quake/floods Disaster that swep through South Eastern Asia.

We have been rendered homeless and have lost all we have in life. Many foreign tourists also were affected by the quakes/floods.

Since we have no other way to survive as of now and have lost most of our relations and children, we have decided to write this letter of APPEAL FOR DONATIONS.

We will be very grateful if you can assist us with any amount of money to enable us start a new lease of life. Our little business have been swept off by the floods and we cannot go and steal. All we need is money to rehabiitate and start business again to make a living. No amount is too small to assist in this relief efforts.

We are sending this mail to many people all over the world for assistance as we can't help ourselves. The United nations and other world bodies/organizations are helping but the funds are not well circulated. So we need your assistance.

Sir/Madam we paray that God/Allah will reward you abundantly for listening to the voice of the less privileged and people whose lives have been devastated by a natural disaster.

Any donation can be sent either by Western Union Money Transfer Services or Money Gram Transfer to:

Mr Musliman Musliman
Kp Kurus RT 009-RT0089
Utara, Jakarts,
Indonesia,
14130

Thank you for any assistance you can give.

PS if you have any friends or relatives you believe that can help please forward this message to them.

Scam email ends

Essentially, if the request for donations came via email then not only is it a scam but there's a good chance that it's also a Phishing attempt especially if it directs you to a website. Do not click on the link in the email and never volunteer your bank account or credit card information.

If the email purports to be a legitimate charity or organization then always check the charity's contact details on the web (never rely on the email details) and contact them directly if you wish to make a donation.

Charity Request Hoax

Though not strictly a scam or fraud another type of charity hoax you may come across is the 'Charity Hoax' email. These are basically nuisance chain letters that tell you a small donation will be made to a charity fund based on the number of times the email is forwarded.

An example of these emails is the 'Krista Marie Brain Cancer' hoax email. I supply the image version of the email below:

Scam email starts:

Scam email ends

The 'Krista Marie Brain Cancer' charity hoax above is is just one in a whole series of emails that make the absurd claim that a given company will donate money every time a message is sent onward. No legitimate company, including AOL, would consider organizing or supporting a charitable campaign that was based on how often a particular email is forwarded. In any case, there is simply no feasible way to keep track of how many times an individual email is forwarded. Any email that tries to convince recipients that a donation, prize, or other benefit is somehow contingent upon how many times the message is forwarded is almost certainly a hoax. Moreover the image of the baby most certainly isn't anyone called 'Natalie'. In fact the baby's name is Megan Olivia Cronce who was born in 1998 and it seems that the perpetrator of the hoax simply stole the image rom a baby photos website and attached it to the spurious message. This hoax seems to have been circulating since 1992 and is only one in a number of such hoaxes.

Ignore them, delete them and do not forward them. Forwarding such messages achieves nothing apart from boosting the ego of the idiot who originated the hoax in the first place. Anybody who believes that creating a hoax about a dying child is funny or fulfilling in some way obviously has serious psychological and social problems.