The Season for Giving and Thieving

Courtesy Wikimedia commons

Holidays, disasters, tragedies and social causes bring out the best and the worst in us. It is as common as dirt for con artists to pretend to be charities, to fake a sick children and to concoct a variety of tall tales in order to steal funds from an extremely well-meaning and philanthropic citizenry. Yes, stealing. Obtaining funds by misrepresentation and false pretenses is larceny. That said, it is also not uncommon for legitimate charities to behave badly and misrepresent material facts to secure donations that should go elsewhere or for another use. Charitable scamming is so prevalent that this year the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office issued a "Fraud Alert" specific to the animal rescue industry among the variety of alerts issued in other industries.

The  California State Attorney General has a Department dedicated to the regulation of, and, if needed, the shutting down of fraudulent charities which also includes a consumer friendly search tool that anyone can use to research a charity that is registered and/or fundraising in California. It is also important to protect yourselves and use the available tools to check the legitimacy of an organization, to ensure that the programs important to you are occurring, and where, why and how funds are used before donating. If you send funds to an organization in New York believing that they are an umbrella organization for spcas everywhere, and expect that local animals will be assisted, you would be wrong. Donating locally is recommended as you can visit and see your charity in action. Funds sent for hurricane victims, wounded warriors, disease research and anything else must go to those efforts and doing the proper research before investing will help achieve that.

This holiday season is the last one in California where predatory "lease to own" financing (analogous to subprime mortgage loans) for dogs and cats will be legal. Very simply, if a pet dealer offers an installment plan to pay for a dog, that plan might, in fact, be a lease where a huge balloon payment is due after the lease period in order for you to keep the dog. In other words, despite what you think, you didn't buy the dog. This "payment plan" can be catastrophic for a variety of reasons from having your pet repossessed to ruining your credit rating. As of January 1, 2018 this type of transaction will no longer be legal in California, but is legal right now.

The bottom line is that the world is a better place because we care about vulnerable classes and are willing to do something about it.  As such, there are always those willing to exploit our generosity and run a scam for their own benefit. Let's be more vigilant about this so those that need our help, get it.

Let's make sure that this holiday season we give to those in need rather than to those who thieve.