Provided by Prince William County Police
Scammers are targeting churches as potential victims. According to EasyTithe, the scammer calls the church and advises that he/she has made a donation of $4,000 but only meant to donate $40. The bookkeeper then checks the EasyTithe account and sees the pending donation.
The hope is that the church bookkeeper places the $4,000 into the scammer’s bank account before the “insufficient funds” notification comes in from EasyTithe advising the church the donation didn’t go through.
What the organization later discovers is that the initial $4,000 donation is declined by the scammer’s
bank due to insufficient funds while the refund was able to deposit into their account without issue. The scammer is then able to withdraw the funds, leaving the organization a victim of fraud and without the money. When the organization contacts the scammer, the person claims to have no idea what the
organization is talking about.
According to EasyTithe, to prevent this from happening to their clients, as of May 1, they made the following changes:
- Support Teams will only be able to issue refunds for transactions which have fully settled to
our customers’ bank accounts. - In the same way, the system will only allow an ACH transaction to be refunded after 7
business days.
Should you have any questions regarding this scam or the preventative measures they took to
protect your organization, please contact EasyTithe by phone (424)-228-8870 or email hello@tithe.ly.
