To protect your business; to protect your customers - Be on the Lookout for Counterfeit Money Orders

Lottery Fraud

Disaster - Alerts   Protect child disaster victims from sexual predators. Report suspicions to the authorities.   Fraudulent reconstruction tenders and Advance Fee fraud after natural disasters   Disaster Charity Fraud

4-1-9 letters (Nigerian letters)

Disaster Charity Fraud

The INTERPOL General Secretariat Financial Crime Fraud Section is carefully monitoring the developments in the disaster areas of the Gulf Coast region in U.S after Hurricane Katrina and South Asia after the Tsunami disaster. These human tragedies of previously unimaginable dimensions have caused loss of life and suffering of hundreds of thousands of people in the affected regions.

Previous experience shows that criminals never stop their activities and take advantage of all situations which present a possibility to make profits, even when it is to the detriment of those who are in desperate need of financial and other assistance.

Under the leadership of international humanitarian aid and charity organizations, enormous amounts of money have been already gathered and continue to be collected in order to supply survivors with drinking water, food, medicine and life-saving goods. Prompted by the media and humanitarian associations, people worldwide are donating money to a wide range of charity organizations. The permanent staff as well as a large number of volunteers working for these organizations are collecting donations publicly, at special events as well as door-to-door.

Counting on an individual's willingness to help, and recognizing the difficulties for private citizens to differentiate criminals from legitimate collectors, increasing numbers of criminals are trying to collect donations for their own purposes while impersonating officials of charity organizations.

Donors hesitate to suspect humanitarian workers as criminals. This opens the doors for the criminals and allows people to become easy victims of fraud.

An increasing use of the Internet has been noted, whereby offenders promise to donate money from the proceeds made through the normal sale of goods or through Internet auctions. Such promises may incite customers to buy even though any donation actually made by the seller may be impossible to confirm.

Recommendations

To make sure that donations reach those in need and does not fall into criminal hands, INTERPOL General Secretariat recommends the following:

• Ask charity collectors for proof of identity as well as written permission to collect money in the name of their organization.
  
  
• In suspicious cases, note the identity details of the collector(s) and immediately inform your local police.
  
  
• Follow donation advice from your governmental institutions or national and international charity organisations published in the press and media and/or contact directly charity organisations to obtain details on how to make donations.
  
  
• Use direct bank remittances from your account to the account of charity organisations instead of cash donations.
  
  
• Do not respond to requests for unsolicited donations received by phone, fax or e-mail.
  
  
• Avoid buying goods from private sellers, companies through or via Internet based on their promise of donations from proceeds.
  
  
• Avoid sending donations via wire transfer remittances to accounts outside your country of residence.