Don’t send the Pentagon any money via Venmo. That is the purpose of taxes.
How, I wonder, can I wade so lightly into these waters without offending a particular faction of society and ruining my own email account forever?
Let’s just say that, at the present, the majority of gung-ho patriotic Americans have shown themselves to be prime candidates for having their money taken away from them. primarily to fill already overflowing coffers, which will likely be routed through a few sham companies.
Given this, it should come as no surprise that con artists have found the stars and stripes to be a great mask behind which to operate, as seen in these three blatantly patriotic con games.
3 Fake PACs
Who would have thought that scammers would find an easy supply of victims in the already notoriously shady world of political action committees, or PACs?
Their mechanism is to act as a kind of bank account that accepts donations, which they then use to further their interests—a process that I already feel like I’m studying against their own wishes. Here, the word “interests” is used in an intentionally ambiguous manner. Anyone who has watched the names of actual PACs appear at the end of political advertisements knows that they frequently err on the side of patriotism. Big-budget nonsense such as “The Creating America Stronger and Better and Eventually Invincible PAC”
Scammers only need to select a name that suggests someone is investing their social security savings in the future of the nation, such as the “Law Enforcement for a Safer America PAC” fraud, which garnered almost $14 million.
2 TrumpCoin
Together, cryptocurrency and Donald Trump may make a neat little bottle of snake oil. That’s enough to provide the kind of boner that would tear through a pair of raw jeans to a fraudster.
The fact that a cryptocurrency called TrumpCoin was developed in 2016, before to Trump’s election, thus demonstrates almost astoundingly high levels of evil foresight. Not surprisingly (or maybe not), it turned out that they had no real connection to Trump or any of his family members, which Eric Trump quickly pointed out and sued them for when they found the coin.
Is this specific coin any more of a complete fraud than the others, now? That’s uncertain, but getting sued for fraud by the Trumps isn’t exactly a stellar track record when it comes to dependability.
1 Fake TrumpBucks That Are “Legal Tender”
The most current of them, “TrumpBucks,” are something I genuinely have to commend for its blatantly insane levels. These are exactly what they sound like: commemorative, mementos bearing Donald Trump’s likeness.
If you leave it there, the product might not be entirely trustworthy, but it’s definitely not a hoax. As long as it can’t be mistaken for legal cash, which is when the government becomes quite concerned, purchasing a commemorative coin is no more of a hassle than that
For this reason, you should make sure that the words “COMMEMORATIVE” and similar terms are shown in a prominent location. It is absolutely impossible to just print absurd money and then assure people that it is legitimate currency. Customization is highly discouraged, if not illegal, as this is paper money, not a phone case.
It’s true that customers actually visited banks and attempted to redeem them. They couldn’t, that’s for sure.
