A scam artist is trying to use the local VFW group as a way to trick patriotic parish residents into giving out personal information and making “donations” so that care packages can be delivered to soldiers overseas and to veterans living in the area.
Charles Cancienne, the commander of VFW Post 3750, says that a man has called parish residents on both sides of the river asking for donations to mail care packages to both soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan and local veterans. The scammer has also asked for personal information, such as credit card numbers, bank account numbers or social security numbers.
“The VFW does not solicit donations over the phone and we would never ask people for a large amount of money – like $300 or more like this man has been doing,” Cancienne said. “We have local drives at Majoria’s and Wal-Mart on Memorial Day or Veterans’ Day weekend, and if we visit a church to ask for donations we always show our personal VFW card.”
Those cards include the name of the VFW member and the VFW logo.
Cancienne has already contacted Sheriff Greg Champagne and he says the sheriff’s office is looking into the scam.
One resident who received such a call was Retired Senior Volunteer Program Director Fay Caire.
“The man just asked me if I wanted to give a donation to the VFW so that they could make care packages,” Caire said. “He told me that $300 would serve 12 veterans and $200 would serve eight veterans. I asked if we could collect items instead, just to string him along, but he told me that I would have to make a check out to the VFW and they would send someone to pick it up.”
Since the RSVP often works with the VFW, Caire asked the man what branch he represented. He told Caire that he was calling from the Luling branch, but he gave her the wrong address.
Already skeptical, that misinformation tipped Caire off.
“I called the sheriff’s office and then called the VFW to let them know that someone was asking for donations,” she said. “They told me that they never solicit donations over the phone.”
Cancienne just can’t believe that anyone would even try to pull off such a scam.
“It’s just disgraceful for anyone to do this,” Cancienne said. “They are using the blood of our soldiers to ask for donations and you have to be real low to do something like that.”
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