News & Happenings

If you have received an email recently from someone claiming to be your Club President, Zone Chair, District Governor, or another Lions officer asking you to purchase gift cards on their behalf, stop. Do not buy the cards. Do not reply. It is a scam.

This type of fraud is called a gift card scam, and it is one of the most common email cons targeting civic and nonprofit organizations right now. The playbook is simple: a scammer finds the name of a real officer or leader from a public website or directory, creates a fake email address that looks similar to the real one, and sends urgent requests to members asking them to buy gift cards and share the redemption codes. By the time anyone realizes what happened, the money is gone and unrecoverable.

No District 37 or Club officer will ever ask you to buy gift cards by email. Full stop.

Not for a service project. Not for a surprise gift. Not as a favor. Not urgently and not quietly. If you receive this kind of request, it did not come from a legitimate Lions officer, regardless of what name appears in the “From” field.

How to spot a spoofed or fake email

The name displayed in your inbox is not the same as the actual email address sending the message. Scammers rely on the fact that most people read the display name and never look closer. Here is what to check:

• Look at the actual sending address, not just the name. Click or tap on the sender’s name to expand the full address. 
• Check the domain carefully. Official District 37 communications come from addresses ending in @montanalions.org or @d37.online or a member’s verified club or personal address that you already have on file. An address that looks almost right, like d37-0nline.com (using a zero instead of the letter O), is a red flag.
• Be suspicious of urgency. Scam messages almost always create artificial pressure: “I’m in a meeting, can you just handle this quickly?” Legitimate leaders can wait.
• When in doubt, call. Use a phone number you already have, not one provided in the suspicious email. A 30-second call will confirm whether the request is real.

What to do if you receive one of these emails

Do not respond to the suspicious email. Do not forward it, click any links in it, or follow any of its instructions. Contact the officer whose name was used (by phone or a known-good email address) to let them know their name is being impersonated. You can also report the message as phishing through your email provider.

If you already purchased gift cards in response to one of these requests, report it to the FTC at reportfraud.ftc.gov and contact your local law enforcement. It is also worth calling the gift card issuer directly, as there is occasionally a narrow window to stop redemption.

Stay sharp out there

Montana Lions do real work in real communities. Scammers know that, and they count on the goodwill of service-minded people to make these schemes work. The best defense is a habit of checking twice before acting, especially when email involves money.

If you have questions about whether a communication from District 37 is legitimate, reach out through the official district website at d37.online or contact your Zone Chair directly.