Police in Scott County have put out an alert about a possible police charity scam.
Georgetown Police said people in the area have received calls from someone asking for donations to benefit members of the police community.
The caller is reportedly from the National Police and Trooper Association.
“They went through a pretty significant spiel that the donations go to law enforcement training, families of law enforcement officers or troopers that are killed in the line of duty,” Georgetown Police Department Captain Robert Swanigan said.
http://liarcatchers.com/fraud_investigation.html
Typos on the organization’s website sent out a red flag and police learned people who’ve claimed to raise money for the charity, the non-profit it’s registered to, have gotten in trouble in the past.
The non-profit is the International Union of Police Associations based in Florida.
According to most recent IRS documents, the non-profit received revenue of more than $12 million but only about $47,000 went to charities.
“One of the big problems with fundraising that people do not understand is it does require a fair amount of overhead,” Rich Roberts of the International Union of Police Associations said.
According to those same documents, more than $12 million in overhead.
“People are free to donate their money wherever they want to spend it obviously, but when we see like this happening we want to get the word out,” Capt. Swanigan said.
Donate if you wish, but police warn less than 1 percent of a group’s revenue isn’t a lot of charity.
