Legal Question in Business Law in Virginia

Re: Would there be any legal problems with this?

Generally speaking, fraud is asking for money

based on FALSE pretenses. And even that is too

broad. Technically, fraud that the victim

REASONABLY relied upon your statements, believed

your statements, the statements were false,

and the victim suffered a LOSS as a result.

For example, if I tell you that I can turn a

hamburger into a ton of gold if you give me $10,

no reasonable person would believe such a

statement and could not "reasonably" rely on such

statements. Or if I tell you something that is

TRUE, like give me money for absolutely no reason,

that cannot be fraud. Similarly, if I tell you

that a baseball card worth $50 once belonged to

Bill Clinton and then I sell it to you for $50

-- exactly what it is worth regardless of who

owned it -- then you have not suffered any loss.

You bought a $50 baseball card for $50. So

my telling you that Bill Clinton once owned it

is not relevant to whether it is fraud. You

have not lost any money by paying $50 for a $50

card. (At most, in this scenario, you might be

able to say you would not have bought it, and

have the contract rescinded, but you still did

not actually lose any money.)

ALSO, a false statement must be of a fact, not

opinion. For example, if I advertise on Ebay

"the most beautiful painting you'll ever see"

this is incapable of being fraud, because it is

clearly a subjective, personal opinion, not a

claim of an actual fact.

So, if you simply ask people to give you money

for the heck of it, I don't see how that can be

fraud.

Now, there are specialized situations that can

become fraud even outside of the above principles.

The government has arbitrarily said that anything

which smacks of gambling can be illegal and

even fraud. So chain letters and such should not

be fraud under the principles explained above, but

many government officials would consider a chain

leter or pyramid scheme to be fraud.

Re: Would there be any legal problems with this?

As attorney Moseley explained at great length, unless there's fraud involved, you may legally beg for money, and anybody may legally give it to you. You don't even have to pay income tax on a gift. That said, have you considered getting a job?