The family of Noah Pozner was mourning the 6-year-old killed in the Newtown school massacre, when it discovered that someone they didn’t know was soliciting donations in Noah’s memory, claiming that they’d send cards, packages, and money collected to his parents and siblings, the Associated Press reports. An official-looking website with Noah’s name as its address included petitions on gun control.
Noah’s uncle, Alexis Haller, called on law enforcement authorities to seek out “these despicable people.” The same kind of thing happened after 9/11, Columbine, Hurricane Katrina. And after this summer’s movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colo. Some fraud takes the form of bogus charities asking for donations that never get sent to victims. “It’s abominable,” said Ken Berger of Charity Navigator, which evaluates the performance of charities. “It’s just the lowest kind of thievery.” In the Pozner case, the family had the noahpozner.com website transferred to its ownership. The person who originally registered the name told Noah’s aunt he’d meant “to somehow honor Noah and help promote a safer gun culture. I had no ill intentions I assure you.”