"AG says that 5 preyed on the generous" by Brian R. Ballou, Globe Staff | August 5, 2008
They passed themselves off as members of legitimate charitable organizations, telephoning people in Eastern Massachusetts and asking them to donate as much as $100 to police and veterans organizations, but investigators say five men played on the sympathies of hundreds of people and used donations to make car and house payments or for jewelry, restaurant tabs, and other personal expenses.
Between August 2006 and January 2008, investigators said, the five defrauded more than 1,000 donors of at least $100,000. The solicitors also told potential donors that they were affiliated with the New England chapter of Paralyzed Veterans of America, which they were not, authorities alleged.
According to investigators, telemarketers in Ronald Seeley's Medford-based fund-raising organization, CMR Marketing, professed to be raising money for the Veterans Charitable Foundation. The men would instruct donors to put checks in envelopes and tape them to the front doors of their homes, where they said CMR would collect them.
That sounds familiar to me in some way.
Coakley urged people to "do a little homework" before giving money to charity, by calling the attorney general's office and to seek out charities rather than respond to telephone solicitations for donations.
"It's always risky to agree to give money on the phone and leave it in a manner in which it would be difficult to track," she said.
Sort of like FUNDING OCCUAPTIONS and INVASIONS, huh?
