Charity scams and disaster fraud
Charity fraud follows disasters and holidays, because that is when giving is normal and checking feels ungenerous.
What it is
A charity scam takes money intended for other people. It runs in three shapes: a charity that does not exist, a name close enough to a real one to be mistaken for it, or a personal appeal for a crisis that is invented.
It is timed. Volume rises within hours of a hurricane, a wildfire, a shooting or an earthquake, and again through the holiday giving season, because those are the moments when an appeal arriving unprompted is unremarkable.
The amounts per victim are usually small, which is part of why it is under-reported. The harm is broader than the money. It takes from the people the donation was meant for, and it makes the next genuine appeal harder to trust.
How it starts
A phone call, an email, a text, a social media post, or a person at a door or a table outside a store.
After a disaster, a newly registered domain naming the event, sometimes within a day of it happening. Photographs are taken from news coverage. The copy is emotive and specific about need, and vague about how the money is used.
Personal appeals run on crowdfunding platforms, which is where the harder version lives, because most such appeals are genuine. The fraudulent ones borrow a real person's story and photographs, or fabricate a medical crisis, and are shared in good faith by people who believe them.
A separate variant targets people who have already given. Lists of past donors are traded, and a caller thanking you for last year's gift and asking you to renew is working from a record that makes them sound legitimate.
Why it works
Refusing feels like a moral failure, not a security decision. Every other scam is resisted by suspicion. Here suspicion has a social cost, and the appeal is built on that.
Urgency is genuinely present. After a disaster, need really is immediate. The pressure does not have to be manufactured.
Emotion is the point of the interaction. You are meant to be moved. A moved person checks less, and checking feels cold.
Names are easy to imitate. Charity names use a small vocabulary of the same words. A close variant reads as the organisation you know.
Small amounts are not investigated. Almost nobody disputes twenty dollars, and almost nobody reports it.
How to spot it
The appeal reached you rather than you seeking it out
Payment is requested by gift card, wire, crypto or a payment app. Legitimate charities take cards
The name is nearly, but not exactly, one you recognise
Pressure to give immediately, or refusal to send information for you to review
No EIN, or a refusal to give one when asked
The organisation cannot be found on charitynavigator.org, guidestar.org or the IRS tax-exempt search
The appeal thanks you for a previous gift you do not remember making
Vagueness about what the money does, and specificity about how much to give
A crowdfunding appeal whose photographs reverse-image search to someone else
What to do
Give to the charity, not to the appeal. Whatever moved you, go to the organisation's own website and give there. This single habit defeats nearly all of it and costs nothing.
Check before giving to something unfamiliar. charitynavigator.org, guidestar.org, and the IRS tax-exempt organisation search. Two minutes.
Ask for the EIN. A real charity gives it without hesitation, and it also determines whether your donation is deductible.
Never pay by gift card, wire or crypto. No legitimate charity asks for these.
For a crowdfunding appeal, consider how you came to it. Appeals shared by someone who personally knows the beneficiary are far safer than those that reach you through a stranger's repost.
If you have already given. Card payments can be disputed with the issuer. Report to the FTC at reportfraud.ftc.gov and to your state's charity regulator, usually within the state attorney general's office. Reporting matters more here than the recovery, because these operations run at scale during a narrow window.
Do not let this stop you giving. That outcome benefits nobody except the people running it.
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Scam
Red flag
High confidence of a scam. The content, the sender, the intent and where its requests lead all point the same way. Do not reply, click, call or pay.
Likely to be a scam
Yellow flag
It asks you to act: a link, a number, a reply or a payment. Where that request leads is where the harm starts.
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High confidence this is normal. The content reads as expected, the sender has a safe history, and anything it asks leads somewhere legitimate. Accounts can be taken over, so if a request seems out of character, check again.
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Nothing is asked of you yet. The content, the sender or the intent do not add up. Scams like this start friendly and ask later.
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What this message wants you to do
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Nothing has happened yet
Good. Checking first is the safest thing to do. Do not tap any link, reply, or call any number in the message. Block the sender and delete the message. If it claims to be from an organisation you know, contact them using details you already trust.
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You tapped a link
Opening a link does not usually take money or details on its own. The harm comes from what you do on the page it opens. If you entered nothing and installed nothing, close the page and do not go back to it. If it asked you to sign in, enter a code, or install something, and you did, choose Gave details instead.
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You gave details
Work through this in order. First, if you gave bank or card details, call your bank now on the number on your card. Next, change the password for any account you entered, and for any other account that uses the same password. If you shared a one-time code, tell the organisation it belongs to straight away. Then turn on two-step verification where you can, and watch your statements for anything you do not recognise.
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You sent money
Call your bank now, on the number on your card or in your banking app. Say: "I have been scammed and I need to stop a payment." The sooner they hear from you, the more they may be able to stop or recover. In the UK you can call 159 to reach your bank. Do not pay anyone who offers to get the money back. That is another scam.
Report it. US: ReportFraud.ftc.gov, and ic3.gov for online crime. UK: reportfraud.police.uk or 0300 123 2040; in Scotland, Police Scotland on 101. Australia: scamwatch.gov.au. Have ready the message, the sender's number or address, and any payment details.
What to do next
Do not reply, click any link, call any number in the message or send money. If it claims to be from an organisation you know, contact them using details you already trust.
Do not reply, click any link, call any number in the message or send money. If it claims to be from an organisation you know, contact them using details you already trust.
No action needed. If the sender later asks for money, codes or personal details, check that message too.
Do not reply at all, not even to say wrong number. A reply tells them the number is live. Block the sender and delete the message. If a request follows, check it again.
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How this scam works
The closest match is the scam described on this page.
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