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Unethical Website of the Month September 2005
katrinarelief and others
It makes no sense to look for other unethical websites in a month that has generated the worst strain of the breed: the many phony charity websites designed to bilk generous Americans out of the money they intend to give to help the victims of hurricane Katrina, and worse, to keep funds from getting to the poor, hurt and homeless in the Gulf states. Most of the time, the Scoreboard strives to condemn acts and not the people who do them, but in the case of those who exploit national disasters to devise such scams, no condemnation is too rash or too severe. Those who run the fake Katrina sites are simply predators, with no more moral or ethical concerns than a python or a hammerhead shark.
King of the Katrina scammers appears to be a man named Robert E. Moneyhan, who, it is alleged by the Florida authorities currently suing him and who have filed injunctions to stop his sites from operating on the web, registered such domain names as katrinahelp.com, katrinadonations.com, katrinarelief.com, katrinarelieffund.com, and probably others as well. Investigators with the Attorney General's Office determined that none of the websites represented a legitimate charity and no funds donated to Moneyhan's sites were going to Hurricane Katrina victims, but went instead into Moneyhan's pocket.
Moneyhan reserved the names while Katrina was still gathering strength in the Gulf, raising this question: why can't authorities see this sort of swindle coming and act before the crooks do? The internet has been around for more than a decade now. Surely a procedure could be put in place to monitor and track any new domain names that were linked to high profile disasters. Still, Florida acted relatively swiftly, though authorities suspect that more phony Katrina sites may still be lurking. The FBI is investigating other web traps for the charity-minded, some of which distribute computer viruses and worms rather than steal money. As the outpouring of money and resources from the nation in response to Katrina demonstrates the best of the American spirit, these sites embody the very worst. For their creators, unethical conduct isn't a matter for analysis; it is simply a way of life.