Would Ukraine humanitarian scammers be commiting war crimes?

Question

A cambridge article has an abstract reading as

Impeding humanitarian access and the starving of civilians is prohibited under international humanitarian law in times of both international and non-international armed conflicts. Such conduct is criminalised under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC Statute) when committed during an international armed conflict. However, without good reason, it is not a war crime when committed during a non-international armed conflict. Contemporary conflicts, such as that in Syria, show that this is a problematic omission. This article addresses the challenges in prosecuting the denial of humanitarian access during international armed conflicts and examines the options to prosecute before the International Criminal Court such denial in times of non-international armed conflict as other war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. The author concludes that these options would not suffice and proposes to add to the ICC Statute the starvation of the civilian population, including through impeding humanitarian access, as a war crime for non-international armed conflicts.

The Ukraine conflict has also led to scammers making humanitarian help scam sites. But the thing is, they are techinally blocking aid from reaching Ukraine (by making the site a scam)

Could they be procesuted as a war criminal?

Answer 1

As unlikely as snowfall in the Sahara at noon

To be a war criminal, you need to violate the rules of war. These are for example the Hague conventions (aka Haager Landkriegsordnung) - which bans the use of certain munitions or destroying cultural heritage - or the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of civilians, prisoners of war, use of Gas, and other items.

There is literally no way in which you can violate the Geneva Convention without being in the location of the conflict or the command structure, and to violate Hague, you would need to either supply such munitions to a side or again, be in the command structure.

Even if scamming funds into non-existing "help funds" is super unethical and illegal in itself as fraud, it would need someone in a very specific position to take the money to actually commit a war crime to make this part of a war crime.