Two days after the Haiti earthquake, a man who served federal prison time for a fraud that enmeshed Atlanta Falcons players registered four Web addresses geared toward soliciting contributions invoking that disaster.
The man, Frederick Ray McKoy, 49, of Smyrna, Ga., claimed rights to the domain names:
DonateToHaitiNow .org, SupportHaitiNow .org, HaitiNeedsU .org and HaitiNeedsYouNow .org.
None of the Web addresses are functioning yet.
In a telephone interview Friday with Forbes, McKoy, 49, readily admitted his criminal background. But he said his Haiti-themed domain names were intended for legitimate charitable fundraising and grew out of conversations with a Haitian friend in the U.S. who has family missing after the earthquake.
However, later in the day McKoy said that in light of the inquiries by Forbes, he did not plan to use the addresses or sell them to others. "I don't want people to think I'm a crook," he said. "I know who I am."
McKoy took out the domain names amid growing concerns nationally and internationally over the possibility of fundraising fraud in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake, which likely will generate huge amounts of assistance, much of it funneled via big nonprofits such as those on the Forbes list of America's 200 Largest Charities. Hurricane Katrina in 2004 spawned thousands of bogus Web fundraising efforts. New warnings about charity fraud come from sources as diverse as the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Utah Division of Consumer Protection.
Forbes discovered McKoy's Web initiative by searching through publicly available Internet domain directories looking for new registrations containing the word Haiti.
SOURCE: FORBES.COM
