Catholic Charities is warning the community about scammers impersonating its immigration services, urging caution before sharing money or personal information.
Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee is empowering people with tips to not fall into the traps that scammers are using to extort money from Latino community members in southeastern Wisconsin, both over the phone and online.
The scammers are falsely claiming to be immigration attorneys from Catholic Charities before bilking individuals of thousands of dollars with false promises to help them with their immigration status.
“We first noticed about three months ago that people coming into our waiting room thought that we were representing them, and I was pretty sure we weren’t,” said Barbara Graham, Director of Refugee and Immigration Services for Catholic Charities in Milwaukee.
“I got a caustic email from one colleague, ‘Why didn’t you show up at this ICE check?’ And I’m like, ‘What ICE check? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ But people had pretended that they were Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee attorneys.”
Graham said that in some cases, people paid these scammers up to $4,000 for services they would never receive. She added that the perpetrators have executed the scam throughout the United States and impersonated numerous national and local Catholic Charities offices.
“They would send people [to] some pretty well-doctored photo websites. They had taken photos off of Facebook pages or websites and reconfigured them so that they look like that agency’s Facebook page or website,” said Graham, whose own picture was stolen and mocked up on a fake post.
“Unless you knew to check the URL at the top, you wouldn’t know. Ours is ccmke.org, but they would use (the false site) catholiccharitiesmilwaukee.org. Unless you knew that our URL was not the full title, you would have no way of knowing, and it looked really legit.”
Fr. Michael Wolfe, Vicar for Urban Ministry for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee and the pastor of many central city parishes, shared how the scams are meant to take advantage of people enduring all that surrounds the current immigration crisis in the United States.
“It’s heartbreaking to see … that there are people who take advantage of people who are in need, who are panicking. I have many parishioners who have full legal status, have full citizenship, and have been panicking, so I’m not surprised that people would fall very easily into these scams,” Fr. Wolfe said.
“The sin and evil behind it is taking advantage of people who are in need, panicking and are looking for the fastest answer, hoping that, for several thousand dollars paid, somebody can make magic happen.”
He added that as soon as the scam was discovered, the archdiocese quickly began getting information out to archdiocesan officials and to parishes about the scam.
“We got the communication out as quickly as we could to the archdiocesan staff, to Catholic Charities. The archdiocese sent out a blast email, and they took all the information they needed to get to all the pastors and all the parishes immediately,” Fr. Wolfe said.
“Barbara and I have been connected with my parishes that have both refugee and immigrant families, and with the current climate and fear that’s been out there, we’ve had a couple of sessions with my parishioners.”
Graham and Fr. Wolfe each suggest that people should take several steps to protect themselves against these scams, both in cold call and online form.
They emphasize that Graham’s office does not charge for its services, that Catholic Charities’ attorneys will never cold-call clients or send unsolicited communications via social media, and that people should safely double-check the links on these pages to see if they are fake.
But more importantly, Graham says to never immediately give money without having face-to-face conversations with legitimate attorneys.
“I would never hire a lawyer I had not met. If you’re hiring a lawyer, you’re an employer. You should meet someone,” she said.
“You should ask them questions. ‘Are you taking a payment plan? What does the payment structure look like? Am I going to work with you or the paralegal? Does the payment include an appeal? Are you going to go to my interview with me?’ No one’s going to give you that kind of information over a Facebook solicitation.”
She also emphasizes independently confirming with Catholic Charities whether anyone claiming to offer such services is legitimate, or if they are a scammer.
“Anybody can come into our office. We’re not taking new cases right now, but anybody can come in and talk to the woman at the front desk or talk to somebody for five minutes and we can figure out if this really is Catholic Charities or if it’s not Catholic Charities,” Graham said.
“Anybody can come in and talk to us, and we can say, ‘Hey, look, that’s the real website, or that’s not a real website.’”
Fr. Wolfe said people can additionally turn to their parishes for pastoral support and a “cooler head” to assist them in finding out the truth about these scammers before giving them any money. He additionally calls on the Catholic community to step up and be present to those panicking in this crisis.
“It’s good for the members of our Church to be aware that this is happening, to grow in compassion and empathy for the people that are in these desperate situations. I think that’s an important step, too, as we walk in solidarity with the members of our Church and society in general.”
