During the massive bushfire, millions of dollars were raised for the victims.
However, the money even after two months of the fire has to reach one fire-raved city. The charities were also attacked by foreign bots and fraudsters.
One of the three charities collected around $200 million, and the amount is yet to be provided to people who are now homeless due to the summer fires.
According to the charities, the entire donation process is slowed down due to a massive number of fraudulent claims.
In fact, 25% of the claims are identified to be false donation claims. The recent summer bushfire claimed around 33 lives while destroying approximately 3,000 homes.
Noel Clement, who is the director of Australian Programs at Red Cross, revealed that they had labeled around 1,300 applications as suspicious.
This means one in four application which comes to the 40 staff working at Red Cross are suspicious in nature. They even have applications from regions that are not affected by the bushfire.
Moreover, the charity also received many applications through suspicious foreign bots, which are automated online accounts acting like real humans.
With all these fraudulent applications, it has become difficult for charities to manage the donation. In fact, the Red Cross has hired fraud management experts and bought anti-bot computer software to filter the applications.
Post the devastating fire that went on till March, the Australian Red Cross collected $200 million, but only less than $80 million has been distributed.
Moreover, the Salvation Army collected $41 million out of which only $19 million has been distributed. And the Celeste Barber raised $51 million, which is still stuck in a legal and political dilemma.
Post a massive crowd-funding campaign that matters is transferred to NSW Supreme Court that will distribute the money to firefighters and victims.
Mr. Clement said that he understands why victims are frustrated with the slow process, and the applications that are not clearly suspicious are being processed immediately. But they are very careful with the red flags.
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