{"id":309,"date":"2010-11-23T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-11-23T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beliefbeat\/2010\/11\/faith-based-charities-and-cons-benefit-from-holiday-season.html"},"modified":"2010-11-23T08:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-11-23T08:00:00","slug":"faith-based-charities-and-cons-benefit-from-holiday-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/11\/faith-based-charities-and-cons-benefit-from-holiday-season.html","title":{"rendered":"Faith-Based Charities – and Cons – Gear Up For Holiday Season"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve just written a Religion News Service story <\/a>about whether people of faith make easier marks for con artists, prompted by the news of a Ponzi scheme that scammed $30 million from Chicago-area Muslims<\/a>, along with other affinity frauds that have targeted Jews (Madoff, anyone?), Mormons<\/a>, evangelical Christians, etc., in recent years. <\/p>\n

There aren’t any official stats yet on whether being religious makes you more likely to be swindled, or whether particular denominations are more often defrauded than others, but the experts I consulted say there’s a link between religiosity and increased trust\/naivety, and that Mormons and evangelical Christian groups with strong social networks seem to suffer a disproportionate amount of fraud.<\/p>\n

With that in mind, and the holiday giving season upon us, check out Nicholas Kristof’s column for The New York Times, “When Donations Go Astray.”<\/a> If you want to donate to a faith-based charity, he has some advice for ensuring that your money gets to the right place.<\/p>\n

What do you think? Share your thoughts in the Comments section below.<\/p>\n

*Click here to <\/span>subscribe to Belief Beat <\/span><\/strong><\/a>and <\/span>click here to <\/span>follow Belief Beat on Twitter.<\/strong><\/a><\/span><\/span> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve just written a Religion News Service story about whether people of faith make easier marks for con artists, prompted by the news of a Ponzi scheme that scammed $30 million from Chicago-area Muslims, along with other affinity frauds that have targeted Jews (Madoff, anyone?), Mormons, evangelical Christians, etc., in recent years.  There aren’t any official stats yet on whether…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nFaith-Based Charities - and Cons - Gear Up For Holiday Season - Belief Beat<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/11\/faith-based-charities-and-cons-benefit-from-holiday-season.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Faith-Based Charities - and Cons - Gear Up For Holiday Season - Belief Beat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I’ve just written a Religion News Service story about whether people of faith make easier marks for con artists, prompted by the news of a Ponzi scheme that scammed $30 million from Chicago-area Muslims, along with other affinity frauds that have targeted Jews (Madoff, anyone?), Mormons, evangelical Christians, etc., in recent years.  There aren’t any official stats yet on whether…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/11\/faith-based-charities-and-cons-benefit-from-holiday-season.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Belief Beat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-11-23T08:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Nicole Neroulias\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Faith-Based Charities - 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