Washington, DC – Today, Attorney General Karl A. Racine joined the Federal Trade Commission and state law enforcement partners in every other state in the nation in announcing that they had jointly filed a federal lawsuit against four phony cancer charities and their operators, who allegedly scammed more than $187 million from consumers throughout the country.

“I’m proud to join our state and federal partners in presenting a unified front to fight charity fraud of the worst kind,” Attorney General Racine said. “Today’s actions will permanently end deceptive solicitations that claimed to assist children with cancer and women with breast cancer — solicitations that targeted residents of the District and every other state in the country.”

The joint complaint alleges that the defendants — including Cancer Fund of America, Children’s Cancer Fund of America, Cancer Support Services and The Breast Cancer Society — portrayed themselves to donors as legitimate charities with substantial nationwide programs whose primary purposes were to provide direct support to cancer patients in the United States. In fact, the overwhelming majority of consumers’ contributions benefitted only the perpetrators, their families and friends, and professional fundraisers who often received 85 percent or more of every donation.

Among other things, defendants or their telemarketers often told donors that their contributions would be used to provide pain medication to children suffering from cancer, to transport cancer patients to chemotherapy appointments, and/or to pay for hospice care for cancer patients. However, the defendants did not operate programs that provided these services.

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