Basic Trope: An illegitimate "non-profit" organization.
- Straight: Alice and Bob claim to be collecting money to help kids with cancer, and ask for donations from family members, friends, neighbors, people at their church, etc. They don't give any of the money to any cancer research facility, the local children's hospital, a larger children's hospital, or even to the family of the Littlest Cancer Patient to help them with medical bills. Instead, they spend the money on a vacation.
- Exaggerated: Alice and Bob set up a website, make up a name for their (alleged) non-profit, open up a P.O. Box, and even rent office space or open up a UPS Store address (to provide a physical address). They give a phone number, and it rings, but it either always goes to voicemail (and the call never gets returned), or it goes to a payphone, or even to someone else's telephone. All records that are sent in for tax purposes are completely falsified, or straight-up non-existent. They ask for donations using hard-to-trace methods, such as prepaid cards, cash, money orders, and wire transfers. Bonus points if they actually have "volunteers" helping them, who have no access to financial records. In any case, there is no money going to help child cancer patients or their families, or research, but Alice and Bob can now have the lucrative One-Hour Work Week they've always dreamed of...and the summer home at the lake to go with it.
- Downplayed:
- Alice and Bob donate some of the money they collect to cancer research, but they spend most of it themselves.
- Alice and Bob claim to be Ruritanian citizens on the verge of starvation, and send out emails asking for food, clothes, vitamin supplements, and other non-monetary items.
- The Charity is real, Alice and Bob are simply pretending to be members when they have no actual connections to it.
- Justified: Alice and Bob are Con Artists, and they're exploiting the Littlest Cancer Patient trope to get people to donate.
- Inverted: Alice and Bob's supposedly for profit business actually gives out items for free to people that need them, and only stays afloat from "loans" that the "lenders" never expect to get back.
- Subverted:
- Alice and Bob's charity looks a bit suspicious, but after a bit of investigation turns out to be legit.
- Alice and Bob's account number 38778876 is not tied to the charity, that's account number 38778867.
- The charity's account closed a decade before Alice and Bob were got their same-numbered account.
- Double Subverted:
- However, they are known or suspected to engage in shady practices, such as bullying, guilt-tripping, shaming, or threatening people into making donations, falsifying records, etc., and may or may not have some connections to a criminal front.
- Alice and Bob embezzle funds, and "cook the books".
- Alice and Bob knowingly spend the erroneous payments to their accounts.
- Parodied: Alice and Bob create a website purporting to raise money to help underprivileged infants and children get tattoos, or something equally outrageous.
- Zig Zagged: ???
- Averted:
- Littlest Cancer Patient, LLC. is a legitimate charity, and recognized as such.
- Alice and Bob do not collect for any charity, legitimate or otherwise.
- Enforced: ???
- Lampshaded: ???
- Invoked: Alice and Bob are barely scraping by, or maybe just want the finer things in life, and they decide that in order to get rich quick, they're going to con people out of money.
- Exploited: Charlie threatens to report Alice and Bob's scheme, unless they give him a cut of the action.
- Defied: Alice and Bob know that if they get caught, they'll be sent to Prison, so they just opt to each take on a second part-time job instead.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
Just a few dollars could make Fake Charity a better page everyone.
