Financial scams sent via postal mail or on the Internet are common. But the Auburn Police Department is warning against a fresh scam that has recently emerged involving fraudulent letters and checks telling people they have won a Canadian sweepstakes.

The Cayuga County Sheriff's Office also is reporting receiving a complaint of a similar fraud.

APD Detective Doug Parker estimated his agency gets two or three reports a week of such scams.

In one recent report, an Auburn man tried to deposit a check sent from a mailing address in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. The man was told in a letter he had won a $48,500 but he needed to pay taxes and fees worth $2,985. A check was included with the letter to cover the alleged fees, and he was told to call a Canadian number included in the letter, to deposit the check and then wire money immediately after depositing the check.

But a bank teller told him the check was fake and urged him to report it to police. If the teller hadn't spotted the check, the man - like many other scam victims - would have already sent their own money to international thieves. By the time the bank notifies victims the deposited checks are no good, they've already lost their money.

Scammers get money from gullible victims by asking them to deposit bad checks and then immediately send the excess to them; the victims don't get any of the promised money and the scammers get the victims' hard-won cash.

Scammers “just throw letters out,” Parker said. “If they get 10 percent of people to respond back, they get money.”

He asked people to use common sense; they wouldn't send their money to another person and just trust that the promised portion would be sent back.

Local law enforcement are curtailed in their ability to track such scammers because they operate across international borders.

Parker has tracked money wired through Western Union and other financial wire services. The money was picked up - but not always at the location that the money was supposedly wired to.

A woman who advertised her dining room set in The Citizen received a telephone call from a man in Canada who said he wanted to purchase the furniture because he was moving to the area. She received a check in the mail that was made out for much more than she was asking for. The man called, said he had accidentally written a check for too much, asked her to cash the check and send the rest back to her. He never came for the furniture and the check was a fraud.

Police see people who lose $2,000 to $4,000. Some people have even lost in the tens of thousands of dollars, Parker said.

During an investigation from a couple of years ago, a local woman was selling a horse over the Internet. A guy from Africa sent her money for the horse and asked her to send the extra part of it in two payments.

The woman didn't realize she had been scammed out of her own money until after she sent the first payment. Parker told the equine seller to give the African scam artist Parker's name and number if he called again.

She did exactly that when the man called to harass her for the second payment. And the man called the American detective twice.

“That's how bold and brazen these people are. It's incredible,” Parker said.

If anyone receives a financial solicitation by e-mail or by regular mail that seems too good to be true, Parker invites them to call the police to check it out first at 253-3235.

Staff writer Amaris Elliott-Engel can be reached at

253-5311 ext. 282 or at amaris.elliot-engel@lee.net