Charity scams solicit donations for causes the money never reaches. They range from invented disaster appeals to registered charities where up to 90% of donations go to the fundraiser. The FBI recorded charity as a crime type for the first time in 2025: 662 complaints and $7.9 million, averaging nearly $12,000 each.
Charity fraud is a spectrum, and treating it as a single thing is why the usual advice fails.
At one end: an appeal that is entirely invented. A hurricane makes the news and within hours there are donation pages, texts and callers for relief funds that do not exist. Nothing is registered, nothing is delivered, and the money goes to a wallet or a mule account.
At the other end, and far more common in enforcement records: a charity that genuinely exists, where almost nothing reaches the cause. In one FTC action, a registered organisation collected more than $18 million from donors and spent $194,809 on the cancer patients it claimed to help — about a penny in every dollar. Its operator took $775,139 in salary, nearly four times what reached patients. In another, telephone fundraisers kept as much as 90% of what they raised, and the charities sometimes received under 2%.
That second version matters most, because the standard advice — check the charity is real — would have passed both of them.
The measurement is thin and getting thicker. Charity appeared as a crime type in the FBI’s report for the first time in 2025: 662 complaints, $7,907,609, an average of nearly $12,000 each.
Homeless veterans. Retired and disabled police officers. Children with cancer. These are chosen deliberately — hesitating feels like a statement about how you feel about veterans, rather than a question about a stranger’s finances.
After a hurricane, earthquake or fire, genuine appeals and fraudulent ones arrive in the same hours, through the same channels, using the same photographs.
Sometimes a registered organisation with a plausible mission. Sometimes a name a single word different from a charity everyone has heard of.
A link, a card number over the phone, a QR code, a crowdfunding page, occasionally a cryptocurrency address for a disaster appeal.
Where it could have stopped
Give to organisations you sought out, on their own donation page — never through a link, a caller, a doorstep visit or a QR code that reached you. A genuine appeal is not harmed by you looking the charity up and giving directly ten minutes later, and that single habit covers the whole spectrum from invented appeals to real charities with terrible ratios.
Where a paid fundraiser is involved, they keep a percentage. In the documented cases that percentage has reached 90%, with the cause receiving under 2%.
Donors who give by phone go onto a list, and the list is bought and reused. This is the same list economy that drives prize scams, and it is why one donation produces years of calls.
Refusing feels like a moral position. Every other scam asks you to give money to a stranger for your own benefit. This one asks you to give it for someone else’s, which removes the self-interest that normally makes people cautious.
The causes are chosen for exactly that. Veterans, disabled police officers, sick children. Saying “let me look into it first” sounds, out loud, like scepticism about the cause rather than about the caller.
Disasters compress the timeline. In the days after a catastrophe, giving quickly feels like the point. That is also the window in which nobody has had time to verify anything.
Registration is not what people think it is. Being a registered charity means an organisation exists and files returns. Donors read it as a guarantee about where money goes, and it is not one.
Nobody knows about paid fundraisers. The idea that a for-profit firm might keep most of a donation is genuinely surprising to most people, and it is a legal, ordinary arrangement that becomes abusive only at the extremes.
And nobody checks afterwards. A donation produces no delivery, no invoice and no expectation. The absence of anything arriving is exactly what is supposed to happen, so nothing ever prompts the question.
Charity fraud is unusually domestic, which is why the enforcement record against it is strong. The telefunding cases prosecuted by the FTC and state attorneys general were run by American companies calling American donors — the operation needs a plausible local charity, a call centre, and bank accounts that can accept card donations.
That domestic footprint is why the remedies look different from most schemes on this site: permanent industry bans, dissolution of the organisations, and money judgments. The people running these operations are reachable in a way that compound-based fraud operators are not.
The disaster variant is more opportunistic and more international. Appeals appear within hours of a catastrophe from wherever the operator is, using photographs from the news, and are gone before anyone has verified anything.
A third strand — individual crowdfunding fraud, where a person invents a sick child or a house fire — is prosecuted domestically too, generally by state or local authorities rather than federal agencies, and rarely reaches national statistics at all.
In June 2026 the FTC described several distinct pet-related scams running at once: fraudsters posing as veterinarians or law enforcement claiming to have your lost pet, counterfeit animal shelter websites soliciting donations, and prize scams targeting people who had previously donated to animal charities. Stolen or AI-generated images of animals appear across all of them.
Charity appeared for the first time as its own crime type in the FBI's 2025 Internet Crime Report: 662 complaints and $7,907,609 in reported losses. The category did not exist in 2023 or 2024, which is worth reading carefully — it means the crime became visible, not that it began. The FTC recorded 11,019 charitable solicitation reports in 2024, and Canadian charity-scam losses rose even as reports fell.
On 9 October 2024, with hurricanes making landfall, the FTC, the Justice Department and the CFPB issued a joint warning about disaster scams and price gouging. It names four categories — fake charities, government impersonators, bogus recovery businesses and price gouging — and its framing is unusual: the message is addressed to companies as much as to consumers.
In March 2024 the FTC and ten states sued Cancer Recovery Foundation International, trading as Women's Cancer Fund, and its operator Gregory B. Anderson. Between 2017 and 2022 the organisation collected more than $18 million from donors and spent $194,809 — roughly a penny in every dollar — on financial support to cancer patients. Anderson took $775,139 in salary, nearly four times what reached patients.
The FTC's utility scam alerts cluster around cold snaps and high-bill seasons — February 2021, September 2022, and a heating-cost warning tied to winter. That timing is the scheme's design: the threat of losing heat is only frightening when losing heat is dangerous, and a high bill is only plausible when bills are genuinely high.
In September 2020 the FTC and four states permanently banned Mark Gelvan and three associates from all charity fundraising. Their telefunding operation raised money for sham charities claiming to help homeless veterans, retired and disabled police officers and breast cancer survivors; as much as 90% of what was raised went to the defendants, and the charities sometimes received less than 2% for charitable purposes. The judgment against Gelvan and his companies was $56,023,481.
If you are being asked to give right now. Say you will look into it and give directly, then end the conversation. You do not owe an explanation. If the appeal is genuine, giving on the charity’s own website ten minutes later delivers more of your money to the cause than the call would have.
Before giving to anything. Look the organisation up on your national register — the Charity Commission in England and Wales, the IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search in the US, the CRA’s registered charity list in Canada, the ACNC register in Australia. Then look at the proportion of income that reaches the cause. Both checks take about two minutes and the second one is the one that matters.
If you have given to something fraudulent.
Giving well after a disaster. Go to organisations already working in the affected area rather than to new funds set up in response — established relief agencies have the logistics that a new fund does not. Resist the urgency; the need after a major disaster lasts months, and money given in week six is often more useful than money given in hour six.
In the invented-charity version, donations go the way all consumer fraud proceeds go: card payments through a processor that will be abandoned, transfers to mule accounts, and for disaster appeals increasingly cryptocurrency, which is presented as efficient and is chosen because it is final.
In the sham-charity version the money mostly does not go anywhere illegal-looking at all. It goes to a for-profit fundraising company as a contractual fee, and to salaries. That is what makes it so durable: every individual transaction has paperwork, a contract and an invoice, and the fraud lives in the gap between what donors were told and what the contract says.
That difference explains the remedies. The invented version is chased like any other fraud. The sham version is chased with industry bans and dissolution orders, because there is nothing to trace — the money went exactly where the contracts said it would.
The other half of this story
Our sibling site Clean on Paper explains how donation money is moved — and why a charity structure is itself one of the oldest laundering vehicles there is.
No agency publishes a line item for most of the schemes on this site, so these charts show the official categories that contain this scheme. Each series is labelled with the agency's own category name. See how the mapping works.
Look it up on your national charity register — the Charity Commission in England and Wales, the IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search in the US, the CRA's list of registered charities in Canada, the ACNC register in Australia. Then check what proportion of income reaches the cause, which the register or an independent evaluator will show. The organisation existing is not the same as your money arriving.
No, but it is always a reason to hang up and give directly instead. Even where the call is genuine, a large share of telephone fundraising is contracted to for-profit firms that keep a percentage. Giving on the charity's own website costs you nothing and sends more of your money to the cause.
Registration says an organisation exists and files paperwork. It says nothing about where the money goes. In one FTC case a registered charity collected more than $18 million and spent $194,809 — about a penny in the dollar — on the people it claimed to help.
Treat them as unverified unless the platform has confirmed the organiser's relationship to the beneficiary. Established platforms do run checks and offer some guarantees, but appeals shared onward by well-meaning people carry no verification at all. Give to established relief organisations you looked up yourself.
Card payments can sometimes be charged back, so call your card issuer. Bank transfers and cryptocurrency generally cannot be recovered. Report it regardless — charity fraud is under-measured everywhere, and the FBI only began counting it as a category in 2025.
Because donor lists are bought, sold and reused. Giving once by phone marks you as responsive, and that record has commercial value. It is the same list economy that drives prize and advance-fee fraud.
Report it
Reporting is what produces the enforcement data on this page. Find the right agency and phone number for your country on the report page. If money moved in the last few hours, call your bank first.