76 Fake Charities Shared a Mailbox. The I.R.S. Kept Approving More.

The “American Cancer Society of Michigan,” state authorities say, was a fake charity. And not even a good fake.

It was not in Michigan, for one thing. When the group applied to the Internal Revenue Service to become a tax-exempt nonprofit in 2020, it listed its address as a rented mailbox on Staten Island. It was not the American Cancer Society, either: In fact, the real American Cancer Society had already warned the I.R.S. that the leader…