← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · albion
Thread ID: 20171 | Posts: 1 | Started: 2005-09-12
2005-09-12 18:16 | User Profile
After the Storm, the Swindlers
[img]http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/09/08/business/fraud.span.jpg[/img]
[font=Courier New]The Web site katrinafamilies.com is one of several with ties to a white supremacist group that has been ordered to stop fund-raising activities.[/font]
Even as millions of Americans rally to make donations to the victims of Hurricane Katrina, the Internet is brimming with swindles, come-ons and opportunistic pandering related to the relief effort in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. And the frauds are more varied and more numerous than in past disasters, according to law enforcement officials and online watchdog groups.
Florida's attorney general has already filed a fraud lawsuit against a man who started one of the earliest networks of Web sites - katrinahelp.com, katrinadonations.com and others - that stated they were collecting donations for storm victims.
In Missouri, a much wider constellation of Internet sites - with names like parishdonations.com and katrinafamilies.com - displayed pictures of the flood-ravaged South and drove traffic to a single site, InternetDonations.org, a nonprofit entity with apparent links to white separatist groups. The registrant of those Web sites was sued by the state of Missouri yesterday for violating state fund-raising law and for "omitting the material fact that the ultimate company behind the defendants' Web sites supports white supremacy."
Late yesterday afternoon, the Federal Bureau of Investigation put the number of Web sites claiming to deal in Katrina information and relief - some legitimate, others not - at "2,300 and rising." Dozens of suspicious sites claiming links to legitimate charities are being investigated by state and federal authorities. Also under investigation are e-mail spam campaigns using the hurricane as a hook to lure victims to reveal credit card numbers to thieves, as well as fake hurricane news sites and e-mail "updates" that carry malicious code aimed at hijacking a victim's computer.
more: [url="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/08/technology/08fraud.ready.html"]http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/08/technology/08fraud.ready.html[/url]