When a friendly telemarketer called a 74-year-old Bethlehem, Pennsylvania woman two weeks ago to tell her she'd won $5 million in a Canadian sweepstakes, it sounded too good to be true.
But the young man on the other end of the line convinced the woman she was a winner and to claim her prize she had to send him $1,900 cash to cover taxes and fees on the winnings.
Bethlehem police later learned the man was a con artist, but only after the victim took out a home loan to wire him the original amount plus $2,100 more, Investigator Frank Rossnagle said.
Since January, four elderly city residents have lost thousands of dollars in similar scams and several others have reported they've been targeted by fraudulent telemarketers, police said.
Swindlers tell victims they've won a foreign lottery or sweepstakes and that certain "fees" must be paid before any winnings can be forwarded to them, Rossnagle said.
Thieves typically urge victims to send cash through money transfer services such as Western Union and MoneyGram, he said.
Lured by the prospect of instant wealth, victims set aside their common sense and comply, Rossnagle said.
"They'll hook them. And then they'll say, 'Oh, some more fees have come up,'" Rossnagle said. "They keep leading them on. They bleed them as long as they keep sending money."
In the past couple of years, Bethlehem police have investigated reports of people claiming to work for Canadian, British and Australian lotteries, Rossnagle said.
Because the hoax originated in Canada, it is often called the "Canadian Lottery" scam.
Phony telemarketers also claim to work for bogus government groups with official-sounding names such as the Federal Consumers Agency or the Asset Discovery Service, Rossnagle said.
When victims grow suspicious, con artists switch from being friends to being bullies, he said.
"They'll start treating them like children. They'll intimidate them. They'll tell them U.S. Marshals or the FBI will come to their house if they don't send money," he said. "Seniors tend to be very respectful to authority figures."
If that doesn't work, and victims stop wiring cash, thieves just move on to a new target.
Often times, the victim doesn't know he or she has been duped until a family member or friend steps in to help, Rossnagle said.
Tracking down perpetrators in lottery scams is difficult, Rossnagle said. They often use assumed names, fake identification and stolen cell phones to call victims, he said.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police created a databank that keeps track of aliases, phone numbers and other information collected about lottery scam suspects to combat the problem, Rossnagle said.
The resource, called Phone Busters, is available to state and local police in the United States, he said.
To avoid falling prey to a lottery scam, Rossnagle cautions seniors to ignore phone and mail solicitations for foreign lottery promotions and to keep personal information to themselves.
"You never provide information to anyone over the telephone -- as far as bank information and Social Security numbers," he said.
But, law enforcement officials say, the best practice is to remember the old adage: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
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