Groups Warn Of Tsunami ScamsGroups Warn Of Tsunami Scams

The millions of dollars donated by individuals to relief efforts in Southeast Asia have brought criminals and scammers out of the woodwork, a slew of government agencies and private anti-fraud groups warned this week.

"Within hours of the earthquake and tsunami, scams began appearing online and offline," said Jim Lanford, the co-editor of ScamBusters.org in an online alert. "We're not surprised by these scams," he said. "The same thing happened right after 9/11, and after every major natural disaster since then."

On Wednesday, for instance, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) warned consumers about a variety of scams being run off the tsunami relief effort. Complaints to the Internet Crime Complaint Center have ranged from bogus Web sites trolling for donations and tsunami-related spam to for-a-fee offers to locate the missing and sites that play off the disaster but really only are meant to infect PCs with Trojan horses and worms.

Other ploys include e-mails purporting to include photos or video of the disaster and its aftermath; such attachments can, in fact, be worm and/or virus payloads, the FBI warned.

The bureau is working with both domestic and overseas law enforcement, and is "resolved to aggressively pursuing those who would attempt to victimize philanthropic individuals," according to a statement.

Among the ways scammers are using the disaster, said Finnish security firm F-Secure, is to twist the typical "Nigerian" banking scheme with fresh and topical details from the affected countries.

In the standard swindle, e-mail arrives claiming that a prominent African government official or businessman has suddenly died, most often in horrible automobile or airplane accidents, and that huge sums he embezzled can be retrieved with the recipient's help. For a fee, or access to the recipient's bank account, the sender promises to hand over a portion of the millions supposedly frozen in foreign accounts.

One of the rewritten Nigerian scams comes from "Princess Surasit Mangkut," whose "whole family" was "washed away," including her "crippled diabetic husband" who had somehow managed to squirrel away $24 million by cheating the Thai government and private developers of holiday properties. Now, however, the princess has had a change of heart.

"I am totally ashamed of myself in the selfish and greedy manner I have carried on in life and I pray that I can make amends in anyway that is possible," the sender wrote. To make matters worse, the princess has been "diagnosed as being terminally ill with cancer, doctors have given me 6 month."

The e-mail asks for help in recovering the millions; in return, the recipient is promised 25 percent.

Earlier in the week, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also issued a fraud alert, warning Americans to be on the watch for bogus fundraising operations. Among its several cautions, it reminded consumers not to divulge personal or financial information such as Social Security, credit card, and bank account numbers.

Such attempts to steal identities -- so-called "phishing" attacks -- have also been spotted recently that leverage the tsunami catastrophe.

"Fraudulent Web sites have been set up pretending to be legitimate tsunami relief organizations," said ScamBuster.org's Lanford. "These sites request charitable donations, but in fact steal financial information and may be used for identity theft as well. Contributions go into the pockets of the scammers."

The Attorney General of New York was one of the first on the warning bandwagon. Eliot Spitzer's office released an advisory last week urging New Yorkers to "direct their donations only to organizations that they know and trust."

Perhaps because of the huge amounts of money involved -- Amazon.com alone has collected more than $14.8 million for the American Red Cross -- the scams and schemes have been inventive.

A Canadian art student, for example, has been accused of trying to turn a $50,000 profit by attempting to sell the domain name "tsunamirelief.com" on eBay. The 20-year-old, Josh Kaplan, claimed he was selling the domain name to raise money for relief, but the Connecticut woman who donated the name to Kaplan when he said a represented a relief organization, thought different when she spotted tsunamirelief.com going for $50,000 on the online auction site. The sale has since been pulled from eBay.

Advice by consumer groups and watchdog agencies ran the gamut this week, from avoiding e-mail attachments to paying by check.

"Never respond to an email request for a donation," advised Kaplan of ScamBusters.org. "There is almost a 100 percent chance that it's a scam."

But perhaps the group's best advice was also its simplest.

"Always use common sense."