Hurricane Katrina Scams

Parent Cafe
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<p>By Brian Krebs and Caroline E. Mayer
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sept. 1, 2005</p>

<p>"Web sites claiming to collect donations for Hurricane Katrina victims. Phony e-mails pretending to solicit money from well-known charities. Online auctions of Internet domain names with Katrina-related addresses, such as “katrinaourtsunami.com.”</p>

<p>Less than two days after the hurricane, Internet opportunists are already trying to cash in on public sympathy for Katrina’s victims.</p>

<p>Within the past 24 hours, several Web sites have emerged, promising to forward money to relief workers. Bearing such names as Katrinahelp.com, katrinadonations.com and katrinarelief.com, the sites ask for money to be sent through Paypal, but there is no way to verify who is getting the money.
Art Taylor, president of the Better Business Bureau’s Wise Giving Alliance, said consumers shouldn’t be in a hurry to contribute…</p>

<p>“Be careful about new charities that spring up overnight. They may have good intentions, but they don’t have the means or experience to deliver aid. And there’s no need to feel you need to do something immediate. What charities can possibly be on the ground right now providing services? We can barely get soldiers and other relief people into the area to help. You have time to be deliberative and think through how you want to help. Check out the organization first.”<a href=“http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9160668/”>http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9160668/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Good post.</p>

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<p>I am going to wait to donate any money for a couple weeks anyways, until they get that mess sorted out a little bit.</p>

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<p>You can’t go wrong with the Salvation Army or Catholic Charities (in a city where counties are called parishes).</p>

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<p>There is still no guarantee that the funds collected will actually go to helping disaster victims. The only guarantee is that money collected will go into the charity’s general fund, which may be ok to you. Who really knows how much is really collected though and when/how it is disbursed.</p>

<p>Even grocery stores and other reputable businesses that collect money in the name of charity may invest that money first in order to scam off some earned income before turning the money over to a charity.</p>

<p>I would recommend sticking with known reputable charities like the Red Cross, etc., paying by check or money order (not even a credit card) and only paying directly to the charity, never to a third party.</p>

<p>Why not online? Because there is probably a “PayPal” type of third party that processes the credit card transaction and receives a percentage of the gross sales (err, I mean donations).</p>

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<p>Thank you for posting that, NSM. Great suggestions from all.</p>

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<p>My personal experience in Santa Cruz following the quake was that the American Red Cross was by far the biggest scam of all (with apologies to the very well-meaning volunteers, and local chapters), as they sucked funds out of California, and had to be sued in federal court to return only 12% of it. And I saw the same for the ICRC in south India, where UNICEF provided water for everyone within 24 hours, but 3 weeks later, ICRC arrived with a water truck, with “Coca-Cola” printed in huge red letters on the side (and a little ICRC on the back), and drove up and down the town with no place to deliver any water.</p>

<p>What we finally did in Santa Cruz was find a school teacher of Hispanic children that we trusted, and equipped her with rolls of 20s.</p>