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The Society for the Aged Sick said it has received reports that a woman is going door to door peddling bogus donation tickets for $2 apiece.
'We have never authorised anyone to raise funds and we have never held such fund-raisers before,' said the charity's head of finance and administration, Mr Wee Hian Chew.
The society, which houses the sick and the destitute at its home in Hougang Avenue 1, has lodged a police report about the donation scam.
The Straits Times got hold of one of the tickets, which listed the phone number of another charity, the Muslim Kidney Action Association (MKAA).
They appear to be copies of tickets the association sold during a donation drive last year.
At the time, the kidney association paid a company, EDS Management Service, to raise funds on its behalf, the charity's president, Mr Ameerali Abdeali, told The Straits Times yesterday.
He said the National Council of Social Service, the umbrella body for social service agencies, terminated its licence to sell donation tickets in November last year.
The council had received 'repeated complaints' that the EDS ticket sellers were pestering the public, among other things.
Mr Ameerali said some people were still hawking the tickets even after the charity told EDS to stop selling them.
EDS has since closed down, said its former manager Mohd Rafi Mohd Dali yesterday.
When contacted, he said he was 'appalled' that his company's name was used on bogus donation tickets.
Mr Mohd Rafi said a few of his staff members disappeared with unsold tickets for the kidney charity around the same time its fund-raising licence was terminated.
'I have been trying to hunt them down,' he said.
Mr Mohd Rafi said he thinks the same group of sellers are behind the latest scam.
The social service council discourages charities from hiring third-party fund-raisers, because they can be overly aggressive in pushing for donations.
The Straits Times understands that many such companies, including EDS, take a hefty cut, usually 30 per cent, of the money raised.
Meanwhile, the donation scam appears to be the latest in a string of similar con jobs.
The police said they have received about two dozen reports of fund-raising fraud since 2006.
In January this year, two men were jailed for six months each for donation scams. A sales executive and car-washer forged donation tickets to raise funds for the non-existent New Life Children's Charity.
The police advised people to report public fund-raising drives that seem to be suspicious.
