Inclined to Help Haiti Relief? Beware of Scams Already Here

Every time that something appalling happens, I can’t help but gasp at the numerous ways various scammers instantly come up with to make some quick profit on such situations. Unfortunately the latest Haiti earthquake is no exception this time - and I have just received a proof of it myself in my inbox.

Of course it is totally understandable that many people around the world are now willing to help Haiti relief and many do help with their money sending donations to various charities working in the country. No matter how small a donation is, it is still valuable because if everyone chooses to send something, the final amount may be truly impressive and the results will probably be better than anyone hopes to achieve.

But unfortunately scammers are already here sharking on the empathy of people and attacking us while pretending to actually trying to help Haiti quake victims. Now imagine my disgust when I opened my inbox earlier today to see an email titled “Haiti Aid would like to be paid through PayPal.”

This was actually a very standard notification sent by PayPal to everyone if you choose to be notified when someone sends a money request to your email. Such money requests normally include the email of the person (or company) that wants to be paid and the amount.

In this case the amount was ridiculously small - $5 only - and the email address did not look like anything legitimate at all as it was a Gmail account with two dots in it. Now why not send only $5 for a good purpose even if you have already donated something on official website dedicated for the charities working in Haiti?

Of course $5 is not something you will not want to donate when asked - especially when you have such an easy way to send the payment by simply clicking one link and logging in to your PayPal account. The only problem is that I have very strong doubts that the money will actually be used for the purpose claimed in the email. Instead, someone will be able to get away with a nice amount accumulated by spamming people like me and hoping that they will be naïve enough to send some donations.

I have checked the account on PayPal and it turns to be a personal member based in the US (from my experience, non-US members are clearly identified as such on the payment confirmation page) and nothing suggests that the account has been blocked to prevent the frauds from getting any more money than they could have already got.

I will be sure to report this situation to PayPal right away (too bad they don’t offer any dedicated link to report such scams in the money request emails) though I have a feeling that this is hardly the only tool scammers use to get money of our pockets claiming the money is for Haiti relief - most certainly being nowhere near Haiti or the victims.

In fact, it now turns out that there are multiple things you should avoid not to fall victim of such scams that always accompany disasters. And the worst part about the entire situation is that it definitely does not feel good to know that you should now be cautious even when you want to do something good like donating something or otherwise helping.