Following legal action brought by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), phony charities American Handicapped, Inc and American Handicapped and Disadvantaged Workers, Inc. have been shut down.  According to the FTC, these companies called consumers in an attempt to sell trash bags and cleaning products at hugely inflated prices while seeking charitable donations in return for a free gift.  The telemarketers would tell their victims that these charities employed disabled people and that most of the money raised would be used to pay the salaries of these disabled people which was a lie.  The two companies sent unordered merchandise including light bulbs and trash bags along with inflated bills for the shipped items to their victims.  The truth is that the companies only paid a fraction of what it collected to its few disabled employees and the free gift that customers received came with an inflated bill.

TIPS

Even if you are on the Do Not Call list, legitimate charities may call you soliciting donations, however, whenever you are called by any purported charity or business, you have no way of knowing when they call you whether or not they are legitimate.  Therefore you should never buy items or make a donation to a charity in response to a telemarketing call until you have investigated the charity independently through websites such as charitynavigator.org to determine whether or not the charity is legitimate.  In addition, if a business or a charity sends you any merchandise that you did not order, the law permits you to keep the merchandise as a gift without having to pay for it.