How To Find Go Fund Me Page On Facebook

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The GoFundMe platform was created to help people raise money to support a legitimate need for themselves or their communities. All GoFundMe campaigns are reviewed before they become alive. However, in rare situations a fraudulent campaign may slip through the cracks. This violates GoFundMe's terms and atmospheric condition and may as well violate federal constabulary. If you believe a GoFundMe campaign is fraudulent, you can report it to the site besides as law enforcement.^[1]

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Review GoFundMe'south policies. GoFundMe has specific policies that prohibit fraudulent, misleading, or deceitful campaigns. However, some situations that may seem suspicious to you are not actually considered fraudulent on the platform.^[2]
- Familiarizing yourself with the policies can help you submit a stronger report. If you tin can indicate to a specific policy issued by GoFundMe that the entrada violated, GoFundMe volition exist more likely to take activity.
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Gather information near the fraud. While yous need the URL of the campaign at a minimum, it isn't enough merely to direct GoFundMe to that campaign and tell them it'due south fraudulent. GoFundMe will be more than likely to investigate the campaign if you take substantial, physical evidence that the campaign organizer is attempting to deceive donors.^[3]
- Gathering information may crave y'all to get beyond the campaign page itself. For instance, yous may accept found out through checking the organizer's Facebook page that they alive in a different land than the beneficiary and are not related to them in any way.
- Keep your data factual instead of speculative, opinionated, or personal. A campaign isn't fraudulent, for example, just because you've had a disagreement with the organizer or know them personally and believe they aren't trustworthy.
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Provide contact information. Yous cannot submit an anonymous complaint to GoFundMe. The platform requires y'all to provide your name and phone number, also as the email address associated with your GoFundMe business relationship.^[5]
- GoFundMe will not provide your proper noun or information to the entrada organizer to protect your privacy. Notwithstanding, if their investigation reveals criminally fraudulent activity, they may accept to share your information with law enforcement for follow-upward.
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Describe the fraudulent activity. As yous click through the GoFundMe form, you'll have space to provide factual details regarding why you believe that particular campaign is fraudulent. Include as many specific details as you lot tin can.^[6]
- Avoid speculation or opinion. If you received information from someone else, at a minimum you lot should include their name and their relationship to the entrada organizer.
- If you made any attempts to contact the campaign organizer, include a summary of those attempts and any response you lot received.
- Let GoFundMe know if you lot or anyone close to you has donated to the campaign, and what corporeality.
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Submit your written report. Look over your report carefully to make certain everything you've submitted is authentic, and proofread for typos. You will receive an acknowledgement that your study was received. Nevertheless, GoFundMe volition not contact you to follow upwards on your written report or provide you an update on the investigation.^[7]
- You can e'er monitor the campaign page itself to encounter if donations are closed or if the folio is taken down.
- You may be contacted past law enforcement if the GoFundMe investigation reveals evidence of a crime.
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Certificate prove of the entrada and any fraudulent activeness. If yous don't have enough show that fraud is taking place, police enforcement simply won't take enough to get on. Yous want to have enough testify that law enforcement will at least launch an investigation.^[eight]
- More often than not, you lot should be able to prove that the organizer intentionally misrepresented the facts in some way, and that they did then to effort to take advantage of people's generosity and charitable spirit. If y'all have evidence that the person never in fact used the funds they raised for their stated purpose, that can be helpful besides.
- Kickoff by taking screen captures of the campaign page itself and whatsoever other websites where you found information, such equally the organizer'due south website or other campaigns the organizer opened on other crowdfunding platforms.
- Make copies of any other information you have, such as e-mail or other communication with the campaign organizer.
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File a law report with local law enforcement. Specially if the campaign organizer is local, yous may want to report the fraud locally. In most cases, your local police won't practice anything if the organizer is located elsewhere. Yet, y'all tin can still file a study if you wish.^[9]
- Even if the organizer is located far away, local police may become involved if the entrada purports to benefit local victims, or if pregnant numbers of people locally have donated to the campaign.
- If yous file a police report, make sure you lot get a re-create of the written report and keep it for your records. It may exist helpful when filing complaints with other law enforcement agencies, and tin help them coordinate their efforts.
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Submit a complaint to the FTC. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) takes consumer complaints from people who have been defrauded by imitation charity scams, including crowdfunding scams on sites such as GoFundMe.^[10]
- To start your complaint, visit the FTC Complaint Assistant at https://world wide web.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/#crnt&panel1-9. On the card that says "Select a category beneath," cull "Other." And so click on "Charitable Solicitations." Provide as much information as you accept on each of the complaint pages.
- Yous exercise not accept to provide your personal data to file a complaint with the FTC. However, providing contact data can aid them in the event they want to follow up with you to get more data.
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File a complaint with the FBI if you were a victim. The FBI runs the Cyberspace Crime Complaint Center (IC3), which accepts complaints from bodily victims. You can also file a complaint on behalf of someone else who was victimized, provided you lot have that person's name and contact data, as well every bit information about the financial transaction.^[11]
- If the campaign is still ongoing, you may not be in the position to file a complaint with the IC3 unless the funds have already been nerveless and withdrawn.
- To first an IC3 complaint, visit https://www.ic3.gov/default.aspx and click the ruby-red push button.
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Contact the office of your state's chaser general. Each country's attorney general has a consumer fraud section that investigates complaints of fraud. Your state's attorney general may exist interested in investigating GoFundMe fraud, particularly if the campaign has a state or local connection.^[12]
- For example, suppose there was a tragic shooting in your town. You later see a GoFundMe campaign for the victims, only the organizer has no ties to the victims and has not contacted whatsoever of the victims' families. Your state's attorney full general might exist interested in investigating that thing.
- You lot can notice contact data for your state'south attorney general at http://www.naag.org/naag/attorneys-general/whos-my-ag.php.
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Report disaster-related fraud to the National Eye for Disaster Fraud. The federal Department of Justice has a particular department that handles fraud associated with natural disasters and victims of natural disasters. You can contact them past calling 866-720-5721.^[13]
- For example, suppose your neighborhood was hit hard by a tornado. Yous later see a GoFundMe entrada organized by an private with no ties to your neighborhood who lives in another land. At that place is no evidence that the coin this person is raising will e'er accomplish your neighborhood, and they haven't contacted any person or system providing relief in your neighborhood. Call the National Middle for Disaster Fraud for help.
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Evaluate the relationship between the organizer and the beneficiary. The moment a tragic story hits the news, fraudsters may attempt to capitalize on the event by setting up crowdfunding pages to enhance money for the victims. A campaign is more probable to be legitimate if the organizer is closely related to the cause the campaign claims to benefit.^[fourteen]
- Typically a legitimate organizer will explain how the money raised will exist distributed to the beneficiaries. If they merits to be working with a local person or organization, you can easily contact that person or organization to meet if they know anything about the campaign.
- If the person lives far away from the beneficiaries of the fund, and there is no mention on the campaign page of the person'south connectedness to those beneficiaries or how they plan to get the money to them, that's a ruby flag.
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Read through donor comments. If the campaign is legitimate, you lot'll typically run into donations and comments of back up from people who are close to the beneficiaries. You might likewise run into comments or messages from the beneficiaries themselves.^[15]
- When a legitimate campaign starts, the first donors and comments typically will be people very close to the people or issue the campaign is intended to benefit. If all of those donors seem to exist random or accept no connexion to the beneficiaries, that may exist a red flag.
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Research the organizer's background. Legitimate campaign organizers can come from all walks of life. The fact that someone has no groundwork doing this sort of thing, or that this is their first GoFundMe entrada, isn't necessarily a red flag.^[16]
- Still, if yous're suspicious y'all can practice a search online for the organizer's proper noun and see what you uncover. It may not necessarily be evidence of fraud, but if the person seems shady, the entrada may not be legit.
- For example, the person may take a link on the entrada page to their Facebook. When you click on information technology, yous notice very few personal comments or connections. The whole folio seems to be naught merely advertisements to donate to the entrada, and information technology was merely created a few weeks before the entrada started. That could exist a red flag.
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Fact-check the information provided on the campaign folio. Sometimes, a fraudster volition overstate the gravity of a state of affairs to endeavor to get more than money out of donors. Especially if the campaign is tied to a recent disaster or traumatic event, it should be fairly simple to observe objective reporting of the incident online.^[17]
- Across overstating the facts, it may also be that the campaign organizer is flat-out lying about the reason they're seeking donations. For example, they may claim to be raising coin for someone who was recently diagnosed with cancer, when in fact that person is completely healthy.
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Expect for like campaigns on other crowdfunding sites. People seeking to defraud others may effort to cast their net as wide as possible by setting up accounts on several different crowdfunding websites trying to reach the same or like goals.^[18]
- Evaluate any other campaigns you see the same way y'all did the original 1. Effigy out who's donating to them, and who'due south connected to the organizer.
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Message the organizer for more data. When in doubtfulness, you can always get direct to the source. GoFundMe provides a method for sending a message directly to the organizer of the campaign – but click the envelope icon next to the organizer'due south name.^[19]
- Be careful about taking on an accusatory tone. Continue your communication polite and cordial. Copy or screen-cap your message before you send it then yous take a record of the exchange.
- If you don't receive a reply from the organizer within a few days, cheque the activity on the page. If they've been active since you lot sent your message, that means they've seen it and take chosen not to respond. In that case, you may want to either transport a more stern follow-up message or get alee and escalate your complaint to GoFundMe direct.
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