WARNING: tsunami scams

[Brian Ellis]

The most unscrupulous bastards are at work, may their guts rot in hellish agony.

I've received two appeals for funds to "help the tsunami victims" (not that the victims can be helped, it's the survivors who need aid). In both cases, a brief googling has shown that the so-called charities do not exist.

Do NOT give money to charities that are not well known and who cannot give an accounting of their past history.

[rylan]

Oh wonderful, some bastards already started scamming for this? I really hope they get caught, even though its highly unlikely.

[Dr Mordrid]

Happens all the time at disaster scenes. Here in the US it's usually ambulance chasing lawyers or similar slimes that show up at storm, hurricane & tornado damaged subdivisions.

Most often they offer "legal advice" to enter class action lawsuits against "negligent" home builders who built houses long before hurricane codes went into effect

Other times you see the fake charity scam or those who come through subdivisions taking peoples newly issued insurance checks as payment to fix damaged homes, then they never show up to do the work or do it so badly and with such poor materials things fall apart as soon as they leave.

Many of these people are from a group known in the US as "The Travellers". We have about 50,000 of 'em here in the US, but worldwide there are estimated to be over 80,000.

These members of The Travellers move all over the US from their bases down south running scams of various kinds including retail fraud etc. Lately they've been moving into internet fraud.

About a month ago I was in our local Meijers hypermarket when they arrested two female Travellers trying to purchase goods with stolen credit cards at different registers; this with several of their kids in tow

Unfortunately many of the small towns, cities and counties they are based in have governments controlled, or strongly influenced, by their Traveller community

Dr. Mordrid

[Chrono_Wanderer]

I just hope these ppl will eventually be trapped in a tsunami

[The PIT]

Well they've got one of these scum on charge in this country.