by Jonathan Paston

Donation scams may be the sickest scams of all, the ones that take advantage of people’s good nature and generosity. Unfortunately, whenever disaster happens, these people come right out of the woodwork and jump on anything that moves. The worst part about these scams is that they are virtually undetectable. Fortunately, there are ways to find out if these things are legit.

The way the scam works is simple. As soon as disaster strikes a part of the world, the scam artists put up sites to ask for donations. This was terribly evident during the Hurricane Katrina crisis. It was estimated that this one single disaster brought out more scam artists than any other disaster before or since, expect many for the 9-11.

The site that is put up will ask for donations for the victims of whatever the disaster was. Usually, the scam artists will have donations payable to a PayPal account. This is usually the first sign of a scam. The legit companies, like the Red Cross, who collect funds for victims will use their own merchant accounts and never use a PayPal account. So that is the first way to tell.

But some of the more clever scammers will actually get their own merchant account, or maybe even have one that they set up a while ago for something else. If it’s an old account, you will see something that looks like a business name and not a name that looks like a legit funds raiser.

But even if you can’t tell from that, go to whois.com and look up their information. The scammers go through a lot of hoops to protect their identities and will have registered their site privately so that you have no idea who they really are.

Of course if worse comes to worse, you can always do a check with the BBB and see if this company is legit. See when they organized. If it?s a long standing organization that has been collecting for disasters for a while, the BBB will know this. That’s another thing you can check at whois.com, how long ago the domain was registered. If it is brand new, there’s a good chance it was created just to take advantage of the latest disaster situation.

I personally remember that right after Hurricane Katrina hit that I was inundated with more emails asking for money than I had ever seen before. Naturally, I checked out every single one of the sites to see if they were legit. I also kept a record of the number of emails I received. In a week after the disaster, I received 43 emails. Of those 43 emails, not ONE was from a legit company. I never wasted so much time researching requests for aid in my life.

Needless to say, I did go to the official Red Cross site and made a donation. Oddly enough, the day that I did this, there was a news item on Channel 7 news that talked about all these scams and what to look for. I was proud to be able to say that I recognized all the signs.

If you get one of these emails, there is a good chance that they are not what they appear to be.