Scam, or not?

By joining our community you will have the ability to post topics and access other forums reserved for members. Registration is quick, simple and absolutely free. Join our community today by clicking here.

419Eater is my life Joined: 31 Mar 2009 Posts: 327

I was reading emails in a catcher account. It was one set up by someone here (forgive me, as I can't remember who!). It was the one set up at dodgit.com, catchmeifyoucan. I saw this email in there that seemed odd. I read it, and it appears to be for a charity, to donate to a rape crisis center. Here is the email:

date: 2009-04-21 10:09:26
from: "DEJJ Group" <[email protected]>
subject: Rape & Sexual Abuse

Hello

I'm raising money for Rape & Sexual Abuse Center of Davidson County - please
make a donation by visiting my Firstgiving page:
http://www.firstgiving.com/rape

You can donate online with a credit card. All donations are secure and sent
directly to Rape & Sexual Abuse Center of Davidson County by Firstgiving, who
will email you a printable record of your donation.

Please send my page on to anyone who might like to donate!

DEJJ Group

*** About donating online ***

It's very easy to support DEJJ online - visit: http://www.firstgiving.com/rape
to make a donation.

It takes a matter of minutes, is totally secure and you can even leave a
message with your donation.

What made me curious, was that when I clicked the link to look at their "charity", I saw they have had no donations (which if they just set it up, then okay, I guess if I set one up, though, I'd donate to it first!). I also couldn't tell when they set it up. It seems odd to me that it would end up in a catcher account, like they mass mailed this out to people. Real charities don't do that sort of thing. So what do you guys think? Anyone seen mailings from someone with a firstgiving account? Anyone know about this "firstgiving"?
It might be legit, and I apologize for wasting anyone's time if it is. I just figure better safe to find out then let someone get scammed!

Jasper

Posted: Tue Apr 21, 2009 5:42 pm

I've been discussing this with Jasper in PM. For the benefit of others, I've written an email to Firstgiving's support team asking if they do anything to verify charities they host. It may be that they do, it seems they forward donations to nonprofits, but I wasn't able to find anything obvious on their site that assures potential doners of that. I'll post if they respond with anything worth reading.

While real charities do not solicit donations by spamming people, Firstgiving recommends members email "friends and family" to ask for donations. That's a polite way of saying "Spam anyone you can" Wink

.

Edit: I received a response on this. They shut down that page because they have had a few reports of spam. They also said the following:

Quote:

Firstgiving fundraising pages can be used to raise money for any U.S nonprofit listed with www.guidestar.org

The nonprotifts we help have to be registered with them which means they are registered with the IRS.

I don't think Fristgiving could be easily used by scammers. At least not the types we're accustomed to dealing with.