Scammed!

But maybe I can help you avoid it.

I’ve been pretty proud of how I’ve outwitted scammers in the past, whether involving leopards or macaws. So it was not only upsetting, but also humiliating, to discover yesterday that I had been scammed. And it was infuriating to find out where the money seems to have gone. On the plus side, at least I stopped the scam from continuing, and I can help you be warned!

I have some standing monthly payments from my credit card to various charity organizations. A woman called me from one of them yesterday to tell me that after two years, my standing monthly payment was complete, and she asked me to renew it and consider increasing the amount. The organization was called Merkaz HaChessed HaOlami or something like that, and it helped kids with cancer.

Off-hand, I didn’t remember having set up such a standing donation. That didn’t mean that I had never done so; my memory for such things is increasingly unreliable, especially since I hit fifty. And giving to kids with cancer is the sort of thing that I might give to. Still, it once happened in the past that a charedi nonprofit of dubious nature had somehow gotten my credit card details and took monthly payments for a while without my authorization before I realized and stopped it. And so before telling her to renew my donation, I decided to exercise basic due diligence and look it up on GuideStar. That is the Israeli government website listing non-profits and all their details - their official mission, their paid employees, their funding details, and so on.

I asked her for the non-profit registration number, and I looked up Merkaz HaChessed HaOlami on GuideStar. Its activities include all kinds of important assistance to various categories of people in need. But its registration number was not the one she had said. I realized that I had misremembered what she had given as the name of the organization - it was not Merkaz HaChessed HaOlami, but rather Merkaz HaOlami LaChessed. A fascinatingly similar name, but not the same.

And so I looked up Merkaz HaOlami LaChessed. It’s a genuine licensed non-profit that is also listed on GuideStar. And according to its listing, its mission is indeed to help sick people with their needs. But it also has another listed mission: to provide economic support for avreichim in kollel!

You can imagine my reaction to seeing that. I asked the woman on the line why she said that my money was going to help kids who have cancer when one of their goals is helping charedim in kollel. She replied by claiming that the money that I give was going to kids with cancer, and it’s only other money that goes to supporting charedim in kollel.

Of course, all I had was her word for it. And I pointed out to her that it was very bizarre for the non-profit to have another mission which is completely unrelated to the one she mentioned, and it was rather unethical not to mention it! Needless to say, I refused to continue my standing payment.

After posting this on Facebook, other people commented that they had similar experiences - receiving solicitations from organizations that claimed to be helping with victims of Arab terror, or with soldier’s needs, yet which upon further investigation were actually supporting poor charedim. Be warned!

Yet aside from this being a lesson to be extremely careful about donations, is this a specifically charedi issue? Certainly charedim do not have a monopoly on scams or any other vice. In my home town, there is a prominent and respected (by some) member of the National-Religious community who is accused of scamming people out of millions, and another who is accused of trying to take advantage of women.

I don’t know of any statistics showing whether such scams are more prevalent in the charedi community. But I certainly hear about a lot of them. For paid subscribers, here is a sociological insight that some may consider controversial, but which I think is self-evident.