My question involves criminal law for the state of: Colorado
Earlier today, I was approached by a young man who was soliciting on campus for an organization. He described to me that this organization designed a competition to see who could collect the most donations. They would take these donations and give them to charities of the donor's choice. He also emphasized that if I helped him out, he would win this competition and earn a trip to Europe. He also described that I would receive a call from his organization within 24 hours and get my money back mailed to me in check form within the next 3 days because of some tax write off trick. So I thought "why not" and selected a couple of charities to give money to. I was shocked to see the amount of money required to pay to give the donation. I had already filled out the paperwork so I just went ahead with it. I asked for his contact information and he gave me some. I paid the money ($141) IN CASH and we went our separate ways. The paper I filled out only asked for my mailing address, name and number, not my social security number nor my credit card information. I was having cold feet about this donation so I texted the number he gave me and then received a text back saying that I had the wrong number. This only made me more nervous. Is this a scam? Is there such thing as a tax write-off trick that will get my money back to me (he said that Oprah used this trick in her donations)? If it is, where should I go from here? There is definitely security camera evidence of this if it comes down to it. I've been researching scams and have found nothing of this nature, and also most scams usually ask for credit card information when I paid in cash.

