Wednesday, October 05, 2016
NEA Warns Against Scam Artists
Stage Directions: The NEA is warning theatre companies of a scam that attempts to defraud them (and other arts orgs) through false grant notifications via Facebook. The perpetrators claim to be NEA employees who need seed money from an account to release grant funds. This is a scam. The NEA never notifies individuals or organizations about grants through Facebook; nor do they request money before releasing grant funds.
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3 comments:
I agree with this article that fraudulent behavior should be warned against and punished, I think this article is a little silly. The fact that people have been sending money to stranger that they met on Facebook claiming to be a part of the National Endowment of the Arts is their fault. The internet is full of scamming people, if you’re dumb enough to fall for a fake link and send money without really knowing who you’re sending it to, and you get scammed, that mistake is on you. This seems like those links where you can “click to win a free IPad”. If you click on that ad and get scammed, you did it to yourself. Apparently this is a big enough issue to warrant a warning being sent out to all NEA members, and to be posted on the website as well. All in all, I think it’s silly, but if the information helps someone who am I to judge
Oh these scam artists just get smarter and smarter. Mind you, they get funnier and funnier too. I'd say "Who the hell would send money to some random person that messaged them on Facebook??" but then I'd remember that there are people who didn't grow up with technology and could think that this is a completely legible claim. Moreover, there are just very naive people who for some reason imagine that no one would ever lie and that because something is illegal, people don't do it. How very wrong they are. But this certainly is an interesting scam. If they were smarter scam artists, they would extract email accounts from the Facebook users and buy a .org domain name that is similar to the NEA's domain. They'd probably have better luck. Then again, most scam artists don't speak good English and this scam is about as good as the ads that say you need to pay to remove viruses from your computer. This just goes to show you how careful you have to be these days in managing money for organizations.
I’m sorry, but this is dumb on so many levels I don’t know where to start. First – I guess – would be that an organization like The NEA would not be contacting people through Facebook. And in the weird case that they may, it would most likely be through an official page, not some employee’s profile. On the other end, why would The NEA need funds in order to give you funds? This just doesn’t make any sense. Maybe some grants work like this – I don’t know – but what I do know is that it logically does not make any sense and that should really be a red flag for the theatre company. I would also venture to guess that The NEA explains in your application to them how you will be contacted about the status of your grant request, so if it is different from what that stated, I would be very cautious/concerned. This all being said, companies who apply for these loans really cannot afford to be scammed like this and while it should be common sense to protect you from it, it is still terrible that it occurs and it is wonderful that an organization such as Stage Directions is bringing attention to it.
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