Consumer Alert
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Want to help charities that support servicemembers and veterans? Around Veterans Day, charity scammers seek to take advantage of your generosity. They contact you about fake veteran and military causes, tugging at your heart strings — and grabbing for your wallet. A little research will help you spot these charity scams and make sure your donations count.
Charity scammers lie about who they’re affiliated with and how your money will impact the program you want to help. Do some research to find veteran charities who use your donations wisely and avoid scams:
- Check the name of the charity and its ratings. Search the charity’s name online with words like “complaint” and “fraud” and “scam.” Check the charity’s reports and ratings to see how they spend donations. If you see bad reviews that concern you, find another organization.
- Find out who’s behind a crowdfunding request or social media donation link — before giving. Scammers use stolen photos and other people’s stories to raise money for themselves. Find out who’s organizing the campaign since that’s who gets the money donated. They’re expected to give it to the intended recipient. The safest way to give through crowdfunding or social media is to only donate to people you know and trust.
- Pay with safer payment methods. Scammers ask you to donate in ways that make it hard to get your money back — by gift card or wire transfer, or by cryptocurrency. The safest way to donate is by credit card, which gives you some protection if something goes wrong.
Learn more at ftc.gov/charity. Report scams to FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov and your state charity regulator.
Topics
Scams
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The purpose of this blog and its comments section is to inform readers about Federal Trade Commission activity, and share information to help them avoid, report, and recover from fraud, scams, and bad business practices. Your thoughts, ideas, and concerns are welcome, and we encourage comments. But keep in mind, this is a moderated blog. We review all comments before they are posted, and we won’t post comments that don’t comply with our commenting policy. We expect commenters to treat each other and the blog writers with respect.
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November 17, 2022
I never give to any charity without looking them up on Charity Navigator. It gives lots of info about charities.
November 17, 2022
I will like to know if that you can give me a list of all these scam for veteran charities so I will know who they are? It's good to have that list so this way I can warn many others who are not aware.
February 27, 2023
Hi ftc.gov owner, Thanks for the well-written and informative post!
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