The Norfolk Sheriff’s Office has been alerted by a major locally-based charity about a scam that targets businesses and charities for large donations.

An e-mail is sent which suggests that a person of importance within the charity approved a large donation. The scammers provide what looks like a conversation thread between the person of importance and the scammer that indicates the charity wishes to donate a large sum of money to a fake charity that the scammer represents. The person of importance then instructs the scammer to send an invoice for the donation to the financial representative for the major charity, who will then process it and remit the money to the fake charity.

In the case of the scam attempt in question, someone who is savvy to such fraud attempts caught it and reported it to NSO.

The “Pledge Invoice” shown here provides banking transfer information as well as some “legitimacy” by showing IRS numbers and the like.

DO NOT FALL FOR THIS AND REPORT IMMEDIATELY TO FRAUD WATCH.