Turkey Fundraising Scam 2023: Twitter And Paypal Abused By Scammers
Paypal and Twitter Fundraising scams are now taking advantage of the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Turkey and Syria, stealing donations through legitimate platforms such as PayPal and Twitter.
This week, high-magnitude earthquakes killed over 15,000 people, damaged infrastructure, and disrupted network connectivity across the Middle East and Mediterranean region.
Scammers are targeting unsuspecting donors as the government, businesses, and charitable organisations mobilise to raise funds and aid victims of this ecological disaster.
PayPal and Twitter were used in a Fundraising scam
Many vigilante websites have identified a number of Fundraising scams that are utilising legitimate platforms such as PayPal’s fundraising pages to create convincing Fundraising scam websites and collect funds from donors hoping to help earthquake victims.
One of the Fundraising scams, for example, advertises itself on Twitter as a “Turkey Earthquake Relief” fundraiser. To establish credibility, the account frequently retweets updates from well-known news outlets and government officials.
The PayPal link in such profiles is extremely amateurish. This is the ultimate enticement to direct donors to the genuine PayPal.com website, which hosts a fundraising scam page.
The fake Twitter accounts have since been suspended, but the PayPal fundraising scam page was still active at the time of our investigation.
PayPal Issued the Following Statement to an Online News Portal:
“Over 500,000 legitimate charities and non-profit organisations use PayPal around the world. While the vast majority of people who use PayPal to accept donations have the best of intentions.
While the vast majority of people who use PayPal to accept donations have the best of intentions.
PayPal teams are always working hard to investigate and ban accounts, especially in the aftermath of events like the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, to ensure that donations go to the intended causes.
We also encourage residents to report any suspicious activity to the company. As always, we advise anyone interested in assisting with disaster relief to do so through verified, reputable organisations or corporate campaigns.”
Wisdom Ganga is a Blogging Site that Aims to Make People Aware of Online Scam and other Digital Knowledge. Scam Topics are very sensitive issues that have taken the shape of Crime. The majority of people are not aware of such things. Please help us to make people aware of Scam and Cyber Crime by sharing this knowledge and article with others. Also Help Us by following us on Instgram, Facebook and Twitter.
Our team at Wisdomganga is constantly working to recognise various possible scams and is focused on making everyone aware of them. If you find this article useful then you can now order a cup of coffee for our team as a token of love.