Charity Scams

Several scam operations were popping up when hurricanes were wandering through the lands of America and the tsunami disaster that swept across the Indian Ocean, striking coastal regions of Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Bangladesh, Burma and Malaysia. Be cautious of the fake donations during a disaster. Sadly, but low life scammers twist disasters into their own capital building opportunities. Setting up a fake charity is quite easy.

Cautions:

• Don't give payment information to anyone who contacts you by Phone or via Email..
• Check the name of the company carefully! Charity scams use alike to original names to create confusion to obtain your donations. For instance: National Cancer Society (it's a fake one -SCAM) instead of American Cancer Society (it's real one).
• Stay away from all the charities that use a "pitch" filled with a major amount of touching words or images.

• Else ask the charity to send you the printed material through mail. If the material does not hold particulars on accurately how the money is used and the percent of donations which really reach to the given cause, do not contribute. If the information's are not given and you still would like to know more details, then call them. Legitimate charities hold up secrecy and never hesitate to show who they are, what they do and how do they do it.
• Don't offer in to pressure or firm sell strategy and if the aid organization representative pressures you to give money without delay or as soon as possible, get even more doubtful.
• Be cautious if the "charity" accepts an online payment processor like paypal and a PO Box as their single payment option. All charities should hold up the wire transfer also as a PO BOX is unnamed and know that how easy it is to open up a fake paypal account. Trustworthy charities must have a street address and a phone number.
• If you received a charity request by email then please check the email address with our Email Scam Checker Tool. It's free to access for all the users.