Beware of Hurricane Helene Fundraising Scams

Today in my middle school web design class, we took some time at the start to “think / pair / share” about the past weekend’s dramatic and even traumatic events caused by Hurricane Helene. Several teachers in our department did not have electricity at their houses for three days, and some students reported electricity outages lasting from a few hours to three days. Some related stories about trees which had crashed down and crushed the limbs of relatives. Students and staff who have friends and family members in the mountains of Western North Carolina shared stories of people who are still missing, grandparents who are stranded in their homes and cannot leave, and even some friends who were killed. From a societal impact perspective, Hurricane Helene appears to the the Hurricane Katrina of our current generation of students. US Interstate 40 is washed out and closed near the Tennessee and North Carolina border, with news outlets reporting it may remain closed for months, perhaps up to a year. North Carolina towns like Chimney Rock have been completely destroyed, entire communities are still cut off from all road access and without both power and water, grocery stores are closed or empty of products. It’s truly apocalyptic.

Unfortunately, when natural disasters like this take place today in our digitally connected society, some individuals choose to become BAD ACTORS and create FRAUDULENT websites and profiles on sites like GoFundMe.com and Venmo.com. As I explained this to my web design middle schoolers this morning and visited GoFundMe.com, I searched for the word “Hurricane” and immediately saw a GoFundMe campaign page which looked suspicious.

I modeled the use of the “lateral reading” media literacy strategy for my students, as well as the “SIFT web literacy” strategy, in which we STOP, INVESTIGATE the source, FIND trusted coverage, and TRACE to the original. We conducted REVERSE IMAGE SEARCHES on the image provided on the webpage using both Google Lens and TinEye.com, and looked for tell-tale discrepancies on the different websites we found for the alleged “organizer” of the GoFundMe campaign on sites like Facebook and Venmo. As the teacher and adult with logins to sites like Facebook and Venmo, I performed all these searches as a “modeled” lesson for students, and I think it was a memorable learning experience. Together we discovered:

1. No nonprofit exists in Charlotte, North Carolina under the name used for the GoFundMe campaign.
2. A nonprofit with that name exists in California, but it is focused on addressing homelessness.
3. The official North Carolina database of non-profits and charities does not list an organization in our state with the name used in the GoFundMe campaign.
4. A Facebook page with the name of the alleged “GoFundMe organizer” was inactive for a year until 2 days ago, when it posted a link to the GoFundMe page and a Venmo page with the name of this ficticious Charlotte charity. That Venmo page did not have a profile image, a profile banner image, or provide any type of organizational web link.
5. The GoFundMe indicated the nonprofit is Charlotte-based, but Facebook posts claimed it operates out of Hickory, Conover and Davidson NC.

I created a Google Doc including descriptions, links and screenshots detailing this “digital evidence” supporting the contention that the GoFundMe campaign is fraudulent, and I reported the suspected fraud pages / campaigns officially to both GoFundMe and to Venmo before lunch.

Here are the statistics which make this situation sad and even tragic:

1. At 11:33am this morning, the GoFundMe page had received over 1000 donations totaling $96, 729. The funding goal was $200,000, and had increased in class from $100,000 originally. The top donor had individually contributed $1500.
2. Now at 4:33 pm this afternoon, the same page has received over 1900 donations totaling $193,195, and the campaign goal has been increased to $500,000. A new top donor has individually contributed $5000.

GoFundMe sent an email confirming their receipt of my fraudulent campaign report, but indicated they may take up to two days to resolve their inquiry.

There is a chance I might be wrong with my “digital forensics” in this situation, so I’m hesitant to publicly share a link to my Google Doc of documentation or the link to the actual GoFundMe campaign. You can easily find it as of this writing, however, on GoFundMe.com.

I’ll update this post after I hear back from the GoFundMe admin / support team and they complete their inquiry.

Be CAREFUL out there, folks. We need to be generous with our money, resources and time to support those who are suffering from natural disasters like Hurricane Helene, but we need to be SAAVY and WARY of fundraising campaigns shared by individuals who do not appear, after some cursory “lateral reading” and “SIFTing,” to be legitimate, good-faith actors.