Hurricane Gustav escams
By Pulkhit Sharma

Hurricane Gustav was described as the ‘Perfect Storm’ as the American Government scrambled to evacuate the citizens of New Orleans this week.  While Gustav killed 90 people in the Caribbean on its way to US, the storm has now been downgraded.  And life is slowly returning to normalcy.

24 by 7 coverage from the heart of New Orleans kept us informed about how Government officials and volunteers worked non-stop to help the locals.  Unfortunately, there were frauds and con artists working in the background to work out new ways to use the hurricane to cheat people.  Nearly 100 website names relating to Hurricane Gustav were registered in 48 hours to be used for bogus charity and relief frauds.

Such con artists have been doing this since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.  The day Katrina struck; hundreds of websites came up requesting donations.  While some are genuine, most are used to commit identity theft and phishing.  Some even use this as a business opportunity and create websites which they sell for a profit to genuine charities.