22 Jun 2025 - AJ
I spend a lot of time on this blog hammering the general message of be cautious and think.
This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be kind to your fellow human beings and give when you can and what you can, just think before you donate. There are scammers who use GoFundMe or similar, but that doesn’t mean that every person and every cause on GoFundMe is fraudulent. There are plenty of people trying to raise money for completely legitimate reasons.
The scam I cover today happens on GoFundMe and similar sites, but its roots are in older in-person scams where someone comes up to you and asks for money - usually a small amount so that they don’t seem suspicious.
I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again. Scammers love social engineering, manipulating the emotions of fear, anger, empathy, love - well, just about any human emotion. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t love our neighbor and be charitable. We should be clothing the naked, feeding the hungry and giving them drink, being hospitable, and looking after one another as we are commanded to do.