First Katrina Scammer Arrested, Tricked 50 People Out Of Nearly $1,000 Each
from the must-do-quite-a-convincing-job dept
The Hurricane Katrina scams were well expected as soon as the tragedy started unfolding. The FBI is already cracking down on some, like the Florida man who convinced 50 people to give him about $40,000 to take part in rescue missions in New Orleans that never happened. Here's the thing that still doesn't make any sense: if you have about $1,000 free to donate to worthy causes, do you give it to some random guy who puts up a website? Don't you at least check him out or do some amount of due diligence in what kind of "charity" you're donating to?
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Sad
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The reason. ..
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It's true that it's harder to turn someone away when they're collecting for a worthy cause in person. You feel guilty if you don't throw some change in the Salvation Army kettle at Christmas, but you don't mind refusing the bum in the parking lot outside Wal Mart when he asks for spare change.
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not uncommon
Oh, and a lot of the scam websites set up post-Katrina were overseas. 95% of them were not Americans.
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