Illegal Organ Scams
With all the talk recently about soliciting donors over the internet, its easy to forget that there are blatantly illegal websites out there that do more harm to the transplantation process than a thousand people using matchingdonors.com, TV, and their own personal websites could ever do.
This is one such example: http://www.organassociates.com/
Organ Associates:
This site guarantees an organ transplant within one week of receiving between $175,000 and $200,000. They vehemently deny that the donors are getting compensated, but in the US, presumably where costs are higher, A transplant will cost your insurance company around $75,000 to $100,000. So, where is all the extra money going? Now, that’s assuming that this site is legitimate. I wouldn’t be surprised if they took your money and ran. All they would need would be one desperate person to send them $200,000 and they would be set, and believe me, people looking at possible death can get pretty desperate. They request proof that you have the money on hand. Also they say, “do not tell us you are financially qualified unless you are financially qualified today.” There’s a lot more of the “cash on hand” and “I can verify immediately,” language all over the website. Looking more and more like a scam to me. I wouldn’t be surprised if they asked for the bank account information up front “to verify the information” and then they try to pull the money out. I just “whois”ed them on Network Solutions: Alan Raines, PO Box 1602, Anywhere, US 55555 – medtransplant@yahoo.ca - phone 555-555-5555 the hosting service is based in Argentina, the email address is from Canada, and the zip code, city, and phone number are fake. A legitimate company doesn’t fake this information, ever.
Then there is Transplant Coordination Services who didn’t even bother to put up an elaborate website, just “We expertise in coordination of fast and trustfully service of organ transplantation in various centers around the world.” which has a better faked “whois.” The address which looks fake is in Manhattan and has the wrong zip code and the guy’s email address is professor.shapira@gmail.com – the phone number is 212-354-3476 which looks fake, but I’ve made that assumption before and I’ve been wrong. This site was registered through a company in Kingston, Jamaica.
