A U.S.-based charity that focuses on helping abused children in Latvia has fallen victim to an Internet scam that went as far as to clone much of the design and content of the charity’s Web site.

Jay Sorensen, president of the Kids First Fund in Milwaukee, Wis., said he first became aware of the scam on July 26, when someone in Great Britain forwarded an e-mail to him. Now he worries what damage the scam may have caused to his fundraising efforts and to the reputations of KFF’s board of directors, which includes such well-known individuals as hockey player Artūrs Irbe and Irma Kalniņa, director of the NGO Centre in Rīga.

The e-mail claimed to come from a woman in Latvia affiliated with an organization called the Hope Children’s Home. The writer, someone supposedly named Liza Nikauskas, gave a testimonial for a supposedly London-based group called the European Charity Union and listed the group’s Web site as www.europeancharity.net.

When Sorensen visited the group’s Web site, he said he was surprised to see that most of the content and design was the same as that of the Kids First Fund. Even a description of his family, part of Sorensen’s “message from the president,” was there, except that the president now was named Jason Soren.

“These culprits have associated the narrowly defined mission of KFF with their illicit activities,” Sorensen said in an e-mail to Latvians Online. “They have probably sent out millions of spam messages to potential donors throughout the world—to solicit funds and to seek representatives to conduct their fraudulent fundraising.”

Rather than seeking funds through online donations, as Kids First Fund does, the European Charity Union advertised for country coordinators to solicit donations, offering commissions of 5 percent to 7 percent of whatever they brought in.

The group registered at least three different Web addresses, europeancharity.biz, .com and .net. All three have been removed after Sorensen complained to the Internet service providers hosting the addresses.

Along the way, Sorensen got a lesson in how the Internet works and how easy it is to set up Web sites with false information.

As Sorensen began to track the owners of the European Charity Union sites, he found they provided false details about who they were and where they were located. The Web site europeancharity.biz, for example, supposedly belonged to a registered sex offender in Florida, whose name and address is publicly available information.

On its europeancharity.com Web site, the European Charity Union listed a contact address in London that is the same as that of a long-standing organization called the Family Welfare Association. But when contacted by Latvians Online, a spokesperson for the association was surprised to learn of the European Charity Union.

Helen Dent, the chief executive of the Family Welfare Association, said through the spokesperson that the FWA was founded in 1869 and has never been associated with the European Charity Union or any organization sounding like it.

The European Charity Union also is not registered with the Charity Commission for England and Wales.

“I intend to aggressively pursue any cloning and to shut down the offending sites,” Sorensen told Latvians Online. “I also hope news of this will cause those who regulate the domain registration process to tighten up the rules. It’s far too loose and that is the cause of most of the problems.”

He said he has contacted the FBI in Milwaukee about the scam. A spokesperson for the FBI was not available for comment before this article was published.

The Kids First Fund, found on the Web at www.kidsfirstfund.org, is a registered non-profit organization. It describes its mission as “supporting the needs of kids that are sexually and physically abused, abandoned or neglected.” Most of its efforts are focused on rural Latvia. Last year, according to its tax filing, the fund took in more than USD 60,000 in donations.

Latvian Prime Minister Aigars Kalvītis will lead a delegation Aug. 7-15 to the United States to meet with political and business leaders in two different Washingtons.

In Washington, D.C., Kalvītis is expected to meet with Treasury Secretary John W. Snow, Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez, Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao, Homeland Security Secretargy Michael Chertoff and Robert B. Zoellick, deputy secretary of state, according to the Latvian Cabinet of Ministers’ press office.

Continuing on to the state of Washington on America’s West Coast, Kalvītis in Seattle is scheduled to lead a delegation from Latvia’s information technology sector on an Aug. 11-12 visit to computer software maker Microsoft Corp. They are expected to discuss the potential for cooperation between Microsoft and Latvian IT companies.

The visit, according to the Special Minister for E-Government’s press office, is a followup to a meeting between Kalvītis and Microsoft founder Bill Gates in February in Prague. At that time, Latvia and Microsoft signed an agreement that calls on the software giant to pursue various philanthropic activities in return for Latvia eliminating piracy of Microsoft products within two years.

The prime minister also will visit airline manufacturer The Boeing Co., meet with representatives of the Port of Seattle, visit the University of Washington, meet with the leadership of the Gates Foundation and confer with Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels.

Kalvītis also will meet with the Latvian community in Seattle.

An estimated 1,200 spectators watched more than 500 singers and dancers perform during the grand concert of the 13th Gaŗezers Songfest (Gaŗezera Dziesmu dienas). The three-day festival, held July 29-31, also marked the 40th anniversary of the Latvian Center Gaŗezers near Three Rivers, Mich.

First held in 1969, the festival serves as a smaller version of the grand song festivals held every four years in the United States and are part of the larger tradition of song festivals dating back to the late 19th century in Latvia.

This year’s festival brought together about 285 singers and 225 dancerssingers and dancers from the United States, Canada and Latvia, according to Gaŗezers Board Chairman Arnis Kākulis. Besides the grand concert on the afternoon of July 30, for which Kākulis estimated attendance at 1,200, other highlights included a children’s festival at the nearby Atbalsis, a Latvian-owned club just down the road from Gaŗezers, and the July 31 performance of the children’s musical “Gudrais padomiņš.”

The weekend began with a July 29 open-air dance, or zaļumballe, but the event drew few attendees and even fewer dancers to enjoy the music of the folk-rock band Laimas muzykanti.

The morning of July 30 included an arts and crafts fair featuring jewelers, booksellers, potters and other vendors. Also, an exhibit of the works of the late painter Jānis Siliņš opened in the Klinklāva gallery. The children’s festival at Atbalsis provided several hours of entertainment for families.

Although south-central Michigan had experienced high heat and humidity in the days before the festival, the weather turned just a bit milder and made conditions for the open-air concert bearable.

The concert program, directed by Vilnis Birnbaums, used the metaphor of the footbridge as its unifying theme and was divided into three main sections focusing on the sky, the earth and water. The concert concluded with a birthday salute to Gaŗezers, complete with kliņģeri (traditional Latvian birthday cake) and even a group of modern folk dancers dressed in black and performing while wearing inline skates.

The evening concluded with a dance party led by Laimas muzykanti, this time much better attended.

The highlight of the final day of the festival was the July 31 afternoon performance of “Gudrais padomiņš,” a musical originally staged during the 2003 West Coast Latvian Song Festival. Directed by Silvija Kļaviņa-Barshney, the musical tells the story of a modern Latvian girl from California, Linda, who runs away from home only to find herself drawn into a fantasy world where she meets Miķelis, a Latvian boy from long ago who is on a mission to restore his late parents’ homestead. Although the performance was marred by an inconsistent sound system, it nonetheless surprised an audience of several hundred with the talents of a number of the young actors.

The festival concluded with a picnic by Long Lake.

The Latvian Center Gaŗezers, located west of the south central Michigan community of Three Rivers, was founded in 1965. The 162-acre (70-hectare) property used to be Girl Scout camp. The center serves educational, cultural, religious and recreational purposes and perhaps is best known for its summer high school program. The center also operates a summer camp for children. In 2000, it added a summer Kindergarten program and, the following year, began a preparatory school for those students who plan to go on to the summer high school. Many Latvians from the region also spend summer weekends relaxing by Long Lake.