‘Kars4Kids’ is one the best known – as well as one of the most hated – charities in the United States largely because of its infamous jingle ‘1-877-Kars4Kids/K-A-R-S Kars for Kids/1-877-Kars4Kids/Donate your car today’ that features in its adverts that feature kids pretending to play it on colourful instruments.
Outside of the limelight ‘Kars4Kids’ however has long been regarded as one of the most deliberately deceptive and outright fraudulent charities that there is. This is especially so because despite a quite systematic attempt to imply otherwise ‘Kars4Kids’ is actually a jewish religious charity.
This has been thrust into the spotlight in recent weeks after a judge in California ruled that ‘Kars4Kids’ was engaging in false and misleading advertising in the state and so immediately outlawed all further advertising by the charity.
The reason for this is summarised rather well by ‘The Guardian’ as follows:
‘The infamously catchy tune – “1-877-Kars4Kids/K-A-R-S Kars for Kids/1-877-Kars4Kids/Donate your car today” – has been on airwaves for nearly two decades. During that time, Kars4Kids has faced litigation and state government investigations for its misleading fundraising practices.
Bruce Puterbaugh brought suit against the charity in 2021, after he parted ways with a nonfunctional 2001 Volvo XC valued at $250.
He donated to the charity, believing it worked in service of “underprivileged kids from all over the US”, according to documents from the Orange county superior court.
Puterbaugh would later learn Kars4Kids is used to fund Oorah, a Jewish non-profit. That organization runs summer camps in the tri-state area and organizes gap year trips to Israel for 17- and 18-year-olds. Oorah also used $16.5m funnelled from Kars4Kids to buy a building in Israel as it expands its presence there.’ (1)
We can see that what ‘Kars4Kids’ has been doing is to sell and promote itself as a generic charity turning cars into funds which were then used to help underprivileged across the United States – this is directly implied in the advert with a children used being non-jewish and a mix of races – when in fact the money is entirely used to fund orthodox jewish children in and around New Jersey as well as to funnel money to a completely different religious orthodox jewish charity named ‘Oorah’ which then runs (free/heavily subsidized) religious jewish summer camps in the US and Israel.
No where in ‘Kars4Kids’’ advertising does it reference any such connection for obvious reasons, which is why a similar case occurred in Minnesota in 2017 where the attorney general investigated and found that less than one percent of donations to ‘Kars4Kids’ in Minnesota went to help children in Minnesota. (2)
The charity scam targeting non-jews that ‘Kars4Kids’ is engaged in is well explained by ‘Charity Watch’ as follows (and which I quote at length):
‘Nowhere in the Kars4Kids ads (in most states) does the charity inform potential donors of how their car donations will help kids. A visit to the “kars4kids.org/howtohelp” website displayed at the end of the TV commercial is similarly vague as to how kids will benefit, simply encouraging people to “take action” for the “1.2 million kids [that] leave school without a diploma each year” by volunteering to “mentor, fundraise, advocate or run an awareness campaign.” (This “take action” message likely is a strategic one designed for Kars4Kids to take advantage of an accounting rule that allows charities to report a portion of advertising costs as program instead of fundraising expenses.) When going to the website address shown in the TV commercial, only by scrolling all the way down to the fine print that includes Kars4Kids’ copyright notation at the bottom of the page will donors eventually learn what activities their donated cars support: “Your donation will benefit Kars4Kids, a national organization dedicated to addressing the educational, material, emotional and spiritual needs of Jewish children and their families [emphasis added].”
In CharityWatch’s view, the Kars4Kids ads deceive potential donors by failing to inform them that donated cars will benefit a Jewish organization and kids of Jewish faith. Furthermore, the youth programs Kars4Kids supports promote an Orthodox Jewish lifestyle, which CharityWatch believes compounds the deception perpetrated by the Kars4Kids ads. Oorah, Kars4Kids’ “sister charity,” is the organization that actually runs the “educational, developmental, and recreational programs for Jewish youth and their families” described in Kars4Kids’ mission statement. Kars4Kids and Oorah share a principal officer, Eliyohu Mintz, the son of their founder, Rabbi Chaim Mintz, and both organizations are located at the same address in the heavily-Orthodox Jewish town of Lakewood, New Jersey. Oorah, which means “awaken” in Hebrew, “specializes in outreach to non-observant Jews, operating summer camps and other programs that seek to make non-Orthodox Jews more observant,” according to an October 2016 article in the Forward, which covers news for a Jewish-American audience.
While supporting Orthodox Jewish organizations is a worthy endeavor for those donors who are intending to do so, many donors of other faiths may not be pleased to learn that the car they donated to Kars4Kids may have funded religious teachings that are in conflict with their own faith or personal beliefs. Orthodox Jews, who follow the traditional interpretations of Jewish law with strict observance of Jewish ritual, make up only about 10% of Jewish adults in the U.S., according to a 2013 survey published by the Pew Research Center in August 2015. Moreover, many secular Jews are not enthusiastic about funding Orthodox organizations, as suggested by an official of The Jewish Agency for Israel, a nonprofit that inspires Jews throughout the world to connect with their People, heritage, and homeland. The official said: “The Jewish mainstream, certainly in North America but in other places as well, is not Orthodox and isn’t interested in organizations that proselytize to non-religious Jews,” according to an August 2016 article in Haaretz, Israel’s daily newspaper.
If the truth about Kars4Kids’ mission as a Jewish organization and its funding of Oorah’s Orthodox Jewish outreach is an unwelcome surprise to some donors, perhaps they will be comforted to learn that since 2010, Kars4Kids also has conducted various charity events and giveaways for the benefit of needy children, regardless of their religious affiliation. These events have included several backpack giveaways and coat distributions in parts of New Jersey and New York. Kars4Kids also released a free smartphone app in mid-2014 designed as a safety alert for parents to remind them not to leave young children in the backseat of hot cars. Nonetheless, Kars4Kids’ grants to Oorah still represented more than 91% of its program spending over the two-year period from 2014-2015, thereby making Jewish children the primary “kids” that benefit from its car donation proceeds – a fact that many Kars4Kids donors likely never end up knowing.
Donors should also be aware that even though the Kars4Kids ads are broadcast across the country, the vast majority of the children that benefit from the cars donated to Kars4Kids live in the Northeast, particularly in New York and New Jersey. According to a 2017 compliance review conducted by the Office of the Attorney General of the State of Minnesota (OAG), over 99.9% of the $90 million raised by Kars4Kids from 2012-2014 was spent on charitable programs under the direction or control of Kars4Kids’ “sister charity,” Oorah. Oorah’s two largest programs are its summer camps and tuition assistance programs for Jewish children, according to the OAG, with the camps being operated at two New York locations. The OAG reports that of the total number of children that benefitted from Oorah’s summer camps and tuition assistance programs from 2012-2014, 67% and 65%, respectively, were from either New York or New Jersey. The OAG compliance review also provides a broader geographical breakdown by region (Northeast, South, Midwest and West) showing that 79% of the children that benefitted from Oorah’s summer camps and tuition assistance programs lived in the Northeast; less than 10% lived in the Midwest and West combined. Furthermore, CharityWatch noted that even the backpack giveaway and coat distribution events run by Kars4Kids for the benefit of needy children, regardless of their religion, seem to be highly concentrated in the Northeast, based on the information available on the Kars4Kids website.
CharityWatch thinks it is highly unlikely that Kars4Kids would be enjoying the same level of success as it has, averaging over $30 million a year in donated car proceeds from 2010-2015, if its ads disclosed that donated cars are used to fund Orthodox outreach programs for children of Jewish faith. Kars4Kids reportedly has insisted that it is not trying to mislead anyone with its ads, claiming that a 60-second spot does not allow for time to inform people of its mission and that Kars4Kids does not hide that it is a Jewish organization if donors visit its website.’ (3)
The last paragraph is – in my opinion – the core of the scam in that ‘Kars4Kids’ is deliberately presenting itself as a non-jewish charity that helps and supports needy children in general not as a religious jewish charity that only supports orthodox jewish kids as a way to attract the maximum amount of donations since – as ‘Charity Watch’ pithily points out – far less people – and remember there are vastly more non-jews than jews in the United States – who will give a car as a charitable donation to a charity if they think the proceeds from its sale will just go to benefit a bunch of jewish kids in the north-east United States and Israel.
‘Charity Watch’ continues by outlining how ‘Kars4Kids’ is in effect a form of Ponzi scheme:
‘The religious affiliation of the kids that benefit from the cars donated to Kars4Kids may not matter to some donors, but what should concern all donors is what portion of the car donation proceeds get spent on bona fide charitable programs versus fundraising and other overhead costs. Unlike many car donation charities, Kars4Kids claims to do all of the car donation processing “in house” rather than through middlemen. Processing the donated cars in-house theoretically cuts down on the related overhead costs, leaving a larger portion of the car proceeds to be used on programs. Kars4Kids’ total fundraising costs, however, are still relatively high. For example, about one-half of the average resale value of each donated car in 2015 went to pay for Kars4Kids’ fundraising and advertising expenses that year. Therefore, although Kars4Kids may have cheaper processing costs than many other car donation charities, it still spent more on overhead than it did on programs in 2015, when just 47% of its cash budget went to programs – an unsatisfactory level by CharityWatch’s standards. Moreover, at almost 51%, the amount that Kars4Kids spent on fundraising and advertising relative to its donated car proceeds in 2015 has increased considerably since 2010 when less than 33% of donated car proceeds were used for fundraising and advertising.
Kars4Kids’ low rate of program spending is also particularly concerning given that the vast majority of Kars4Kids’ program expenses consist of grants to its “sister charity,” Oorah, which runs the “educational, developmental, and recreational programs for Jewish youth and their families” funded by Kars4Kids, per its mission. About 93% of Kars4Kids’ cash-based program spending in 2015 was in the form of a grant to Oorah in the amount of approximately $16.9 million. By comparison, Kars4Kids reported spending about $17.1 million on advertising and promotion in 2015 – about $150,000 more than its cash grant to Oorah. Furthermore, as a percentage of the funds Kars4Kids generated from donated vehicles (including boats & planes) in 2015, its grant to Oorah represented only about 46% of those total funds raised.
Additionally, as the car donation proceeds get passed along from Kars4Kids to Oorah, Oorah itself has fundraising and general administrative costs to pay for, which it does primarily with the grant money it receives from Kars4Kids. Therefore, the proceeds Kars4Kids generates from car donations get another “hair cut” when they make their way to Oorah. Fortunately, Oorah’s cash-based program spending percentage was 74% in 2015, which is above CharityWatch’s reasonableness benchmark of 60%. Even with Oorah’s very reasonable rate of program spending, though, once Oorah’s and Kars4Kids’ overhead expenses are considered in aggregate, only about 38% of Kars4Kids’ donated car proceeds were spent on bona fide programs in 2015. In other words, based on the average resale value of about $365 for a car donated to Kars4Kids in 2015, less than $139 actually went towards benefitting “kids,” who, as a reminder, are mostly Jewish youth that participate in Oorah’s Orthodox Jewish outreach programs.’ (4)
The point that ‘Charity Watch’ are making here is that less than half of the proceeds go to the actual charitable cause and instead around half of the proceeds are spent on further sales and marketing (aka advertising) to get yet more cars to sell as well as that nebulous balance sheet entry of ‘administrative costs’ (aka the easiest way to siphon off large amounts of cash from any organization). Hence my point about the resemblance to a Ponzi scheme where-in the scheme is in constant search for fresh investment – in this case cars but usually it is cash – in order to support the oversized weight of its own financial outflows – normally to pay back earlier investors and as a pay out to the fraudster – and stay solvent, because if it fails to meet those obligations it will simply collapse.
In this instance we have a charity being operated by jews who are trying to pretend said charity isn’t being run by jews to get as many new donations as possible, but then if they fail to do so then… oh well… ‘Kars4Kids’ will simply collapse and the real charity it is funding – ‘Oorah’ – will just switch to a new source of funds, which will in turn likely be a new scam.
Ergo ‘Kars4Kids’ is basically a charitable Ponzi scheme run by jews for the benefit of jews to the detriment of non-jews.
It is also worth highlighting ‘Charity Watch’s’ next point about how the jews at ‘Kars4Kids’ engage in some… shall we say… ‘creative accounting’ in order to report the minimum possible income to the IRS.
To wit:
‘The findings reported in a 2017 compliance review regarding Kars4Kids conducted by the Office of the Attorney General of the State of Minnesota (OAG) show that Kars4Kids has been misreporting its car donation proceeds and understating its fundraising costs on its annual IRS Form 990 tax filings. The IRS Form 990 instructions state that car donation receipts should be reported at the fair market value at the time of donation, without deducting for any costs or expenses. Kars4Kids, however, has been reporting its car donation receipts net of the associated vehicle processing expenses (i.e., the costs to tow, scrap and auction the donated vehicles). Furthermore, Kars4Kids does not otherwise disclose the amount of these related processing costs. By incorrectly reporting its car donation proceeds on a net instead of a gross basis, which Kars4Kids also does on its audited financial statements, Kars4Kids is giving the false impression that it is more financially efficient than it truly is. “The effect of this misreporting is significant,” according to the OAG compliance review, “[i]t makes it appear that Kars4Kids spends more of its revenue on charitable programming and less on fundraising expenses than is actually the case.”
The OAG found that Kars4Kids failed to include approximately $9.7 million of vehicle processing expenses in total from 2012-2014 on its IRS Form 990 filings. If Kars4Kids had reported this $9.7 million as part of its gross receipts, the overall share of revenue it reportedly spent on charitable programs in 2012-2014 would have decreased from 63% to 56%, according to the OAG. Additionally, since the vehicle processing expenses should be considered fundraising costs for Kars4Kids, if Kars4Kids had included the approximately $9.7 million in vehicle processing expenses in its reported fundraising costs for 2012-2014, the OAG notes that Kars4Kids’ overall fundraising and other overhead costs would have increased by more than 30%. As summarized by the OAG: “Kars4Kids’s Form 990 thus makes its vehicle donation program appear more efficient than it is in reality, presenting the donating public with a misleading financial picture of its operations.”’ (5)
Put another way: ‘Kars4Kids’ are fiddling their books in order to minimize what they report to the IRS. Presumably so as to draw less scrutiny about just how much money they are extracting from ‘Kars4Kids’ for both themselves as well as for ‘Oorah’.
Thus, it is hardly surprising that ‘Kars4Kids’ is now facing a new class action lawsuit against it (as of November 2025), which:
‘Alleges that Kars4Kids’ widely recognized advertising campaign deceives donors into believing their contributions support local children’s programs, when in reality, nearly all proceeds are funnelled to Oorah’s Orthodox Jewish outreach programs primarily serving families in New York and New Jersey. The proposed class seeks monetary damages, injunctive relief, and nationwide accountability for what it describes as a long-running pattern of donor misrepresentation.’ (6)
Naturally ‘Kars4Kids’ has tried to respond to the increasing torrent of non-jewish legal and governmental scrutiny by the usual jewish tactics of splitting hairs and while this might work in a Yeshiva. It really doesn’t work in the world of PR.
Since for example we read in ‘The Guardian’ how:
‘The charity also defended its identity as a Jewish organization.
“It’s well known that we are a Jewish organization and our website makes it abundantly clear,” the statement said.
The organization further characterized the lawsuit as a financially motivated legal effort aimed at draining charitable resources.
Kars4Kids has long maintained that donors have access to information about its mission online and that its programs legitimately support children and families through religious education and mentorship efforts.’ (7)
Put another way: ‘Kars4Kids’ claims that because it is ‘mentioned on their website’ (not prominently mind you [I checked]) and it is ‘well-known to be a jewish organization’ that therefore this criticism of their methods is basically ‘anti-Semitism’.
And jews still wonder why pogroms started historically?
‘Charity Watch’ has helpfully provided this run-down of the key events in the ‘Kars4Kids’ situation as follows: (8)
So in summary then – aside from the fact that in 2018 ‘Kars4Kids’ managed to leak their entire donor database (including donor names, addresses and contact numbers) to criminals on the dark web due to their appallingly bad (aka cheap) cybersecurity – (9) ‘Kars4Kids’ funnels about $45 million per year to an exclusively charity ‘Oorah’ (10) and effectively operates a charitable Ponzi scheme run by jews for the benefit of jews to the detriment of non-jews.
References
(1) https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/14/kars4kids-jingle-california-false-advertising
(2) https://www.startribune.com/minnesota-attorney-general-finds-that-less-than-1-percent-of-donations-to-kars4kids-charity-goes-to/421323363
(3) https://blog.charitywatch.org/costly-and-continuous-kars4kids-ads-disguise-charity39s-real-purpose/
(4) Idem.
(5) Idem.
(6) https://blog.charitywatch.org/kars4kids-and-oorah-face-new-class-action-lawsuit-alleging-donor-deception/
(7) https://www.shorenewsnetwork.com/lakewoods-kars4kids-banned-in-california-because-it-only-benefits-jewish-children/
(8) https://blog.charitywatch.org/kars4kids-and-oorah-face-new-class-action-lawsuit-alleging-donor-deception/
(9) https://securitydiscovery.com/kars4kids-data-leak/
(10) https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/14/kars4kids-jingle-california-false-advertising
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