MacKenzie Scott donated billions of dollars and crooks took advantage

Danielle Churchill needed help. She was raising five children in Wollongong, on the Australian coast south of Sydney, and had to spend thousands of dollars on special therapies for her 10-year-old autistic son, Lachla. She tried to get collaborative funding on the GoFundMe website, but only raised a small portion of what she wanted.

At the end of last year got the message that seemed to solve his financial problems. Supposedly, it was an email from billionaire and philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, a novelist best known for being the ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who said he would donate half of his fortune and that Churchill was eligible for financial aid.

Churchill searched for Scott’s name and the word “fraud” on Google. Instead of an alert, he found several newspaper articles that explained how Scott’s representatives suddenly emailed hundreds of nonprofits offering financial support.

“People thought it was scams, but it turned out to be trueChurchill, 34, remembers thinking.

Throughout 2020, Scott unveiled donations totaling $ 6 billion. His unconventional way of donating was greatly appreciated for its speed and transparency. But some of the apparent benefits – being a small, undeclared foundation, with no public headquarters or website, and no way to communicate with it or its representatives – were precisely what made it the target of identity theft by crooks., As Churchill would soon. discover.

In order to receive the money, Churchill had to complete a “Membership Form” sent by an organization calling itself the MacKenzie Scott Foundation and open an online account with Investors Bank and Trust Co. Then He was able to see that the foundation had transferred $ 250,000 to the account he opened in his name, but was told that since he was in Australia he had to apply for a tax ID number and pay a fee. before you can have access to money and start using it for speech and occupational therapy from Lachlan.

“I would research and verify everything they told me,” Churchill said. He also mentioned that his grandmother had checked everything and thought it was legal. “They send you proof of everything you ask for, and online banking says it’s all protected.”

What Churchill did not know is that there is no Mackenzie Scott Foundation or that the Bank and the Investors Bank trust, which was headquartered in Boston, had merged with State Street Corp. over ten years ago. Nor that he was not dealing with Scott and his team, but with a complex group of scammers dedicated to taking advantage of vulnerable people..

In Churchill’s case, the fraud occurred not only through the bank’s fake portal, but also through apocryphal Facebook pages, WhatsApp messages, and the use of a cryptocurrency app. Bitcoin take the moneyapproximately $ 7,900 in total) and that he could not recover it with the help of a bank or a credit card institution.

A company linked to credit card security in Israel, Ironscales, noted that messages allegedly from Scott’s representatives reached around 190,000 email accounts belonging to its customers. LThe company first became aware of the fraud after December 15, when Scott announced donations of nearly $ 4.2 billion.

Now, months after opening an account at a bank that doesn’t exist, Churchill knows of other possible victims. He continued to follow Facebook pages believed to have belonged to Scott and in the comments he saw people asking for help and then the comments disappeared. A man posted photos of his debit card. With a photo of Scott’s smiley face, it was said, “Take a photo of the front and back and the location of the bank.”

Additionally, in Scott’s Medium post, where he posted his most recent donations in December, a man posted a comment about the same alleged business leader who had asked Churchill for money.

Marti DeLiema, a professor at the School of Social Work at the University of Minnesota, on the Twin Cities campus, noted that Scott’s method, by which he almost suddenly alerted certain groups to his donation, allowed crooks to enjoy more.

“With this absurd method of giving, he gave them a great gift,” DeLiema said.

Even people with Scott’s resources can’t stop crooks from using his name. There are crooks who have copied the website of the Federal Small Business Development Agency and posed as the Federal Trade Commission, one of the agencies that tries to tackle precisely this type of deception.

Scott donates to institutions – universities, food banks and other charities – not to individuals. One person briefed on his donations mentioned having no accounts on social media such as Facebook and Instagram, only his page on Medium and a verified Twitter account with only three tweets. Your organization would never ask for advance payments from grant recipients. This person declined to comment directly on the online fraud on Scott’s behalf or what steps he can take to help prevent it.

Churchill investigated further and realized that it was highly unlikely that Scott would have contacted her directly, but couldn’t immediately turn away from the crooks anyway. He had gathered all he could to unlock the funds promised.

“My son needs you to have a better life. And I have already lost too much, ”he commented at the time.

Churchill shared dozens of screenshots and webpages he denounced with an intricate web invented to attack the hopes of those in need. He mentioned that the crooks knew he had no money, that he was borrowing from his grandmother and sister to pay the alleged charges.

After a few weeks, Churchill went to the local police. They told her that they had cheated on her and that there was no way he got his money back.

“To be honest this experience ruined my lifeHe commented.

When contacted early, Churchill found no red flags indicating anyone had been scammed. Scott’s only apparent online presence was a Facebook page filled with photos of the billionaire and newspaper articles about his generous donations.

Churchill sent a Facebook message to the admin of this page asking if the email he received was genuine. Someone pretending to be Scott immediately responded and told Churchill that the first message was from scammers pretending to be her, but since they were now in direct contact, she could help him.

They sent him the link to an Investors Bank and Trust website. It looked like a professionally designed page: with attractive photos, an email address, a phone number with a New Jersey zip code, and a Los Angeles address. Churchill created an online profile, chose his username and password, and agreed to the terms and conditions of service. Before long, the money ($ 250,000) appeared in what he believed to be his Bank and Investor Trust account.

The aim of the fake banking site is to convince victims that the money is already theirs. Fraud tracking specialists call it a “glow”. There was a series of payments Churchill had to make to release the $ 250,000 from his account: membership fees, account management fees and tax identification number, and transfer fees.

When the scammer group has gotten all they can from the victim, they almost always sell that person’s information. Soon after, Churchill began to receive a series of messages: one purportedly from the International Monetary Fund and another from a woman in the Republic of Congo who needed help selling gold.

“This is not a single lone wolf fraud“Said Kari-Anne Liebling of ScamSurvivors, a group of volunteers who track Internet conspiracies.”After the first contact, the victim is taken to another fraud, then to another and so on“.

© The New York Times 2021

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