With the attention on the world focused on the people of the Ukraine and their resistance to the Russian invasion which has included attacks on civilians, more and more people are donating to organizations helping the people of the Ukraine.  Unfortunately, as we expected and have already seen, scammers are taking advantage of the situation and contacting people by phone, emails, text messages and on social media posing as charities and relief organizations in an effort to lure people into sending money to them.

Here is a copy of an email sent to me by a Scamicide reader who received it that is a good example of this type of scam.  It is not a particularly sophisticated version of this type of scam in that it has numerous spelling and grammatical errors and was sent from an email address that had no relation to the United Nations.

S O S

Hope this mail finds you well,

I am Evgeniy Maloletka, i work for THE UNITED NATIONS IN UKRAINE
a non profit charity organisation offering aid to displaced
persons in various shelter places in ukraine

we are out of food and water and the provision for accomodation
in various shelters have been overstretched as a lot of people do
not want to leave there cities and home.

we plead that you come to our aid as we are in desperate need of
funds to help us continue to provide for the kids , women and
sick aged parents.

Last week we got delivered of 3,000 liters of potable water by
the UN as support but still we are few litres from a drought in
some shelter as fighting is hindering access to some of this
shelters.

Your support will aid us in providing good drinking water,food
and medical assistance and aslo improve livin conditions in
various shelters.

Please help us ..we don’t know how long the internet will be up
as we just got back online through the help of billionaire elon
musk, God bless him.who granted ukraine access to his statelite
to help keep our internet up.

may God bless your heart to help us.

Please find below our BTC, ETH AND USDT wallet, as it the only
way presently to exchange for quick purchase and to avert the
inconveniences we have been encountering as banking systems are
down.

THIS MAIL IS A CRY FOR HELP.

BTC WALLET : bc1qpfjef0dah76mjtmnk2rd9uhynjv4pne69ue0qy

ETHEREUM WALLET : 0xdA74C74fa0d1bC2DA457589E7265750ba0e37d57

USDT WALLET(TRC20) : TUe3DMULJZu9f5BnQZ1skU3NHq7r4kBQQC

TIPS

Before you give to any charity, you should check out the charity with http://www.charitynavigator.org where you can learn whether or not the charity itself is a scam. You can also see how much of the money that the legitimate charity collects actually goes toward its charitable purposes and how much it uses for fund raising and administrative costs.  Charitynavigator.org has a list of specific highly-rated charities that they recommend if you wish to assist the people of Ukraine.  Among the highly rated charities are Global Giving, Save the Children and the Center for Disaster Philanthropy.   For a full list and descriptions of these charities and others that are good choices for your charitable gifts to help the people of the Ukraine, use this link. https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=content.view&cpid=9366

For those of you receiving the Scam of the day through an email, I just want to remind you that if you want to see the ever increasing list of Coronavirus scams go to the first page of the http://www.scamicide.com website and click on the tab at the top of the page that indicates “Coronavirus Scams.”  Scamicide was cited by the New York Times as one of three top sources for information about Coronavirus related scams.

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