By STEPHANIE TAIT
She lost $6,000 before he could stop her.
A Stafford County man's 87-year-old mother, who is in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease, wrote more than 150 checks to various mail-order companies over a two-month period before her son realized what she was doing.
"I was extremely upset," he said. "She used to come banging on my door, thinking she'd won."
What she thought she won was anything from a grand prize of $25,000 to a free vacation and merchandise.
She hadn't won a thing. Fact is, she was losing money daily.
John did not want his last name identified, in order to protect his mother's privacy. He said he hopes that his talking about the experience will help others avoid similar problems.
He said he didn't notice his mother's problem at first.
"I live right across the street from her and all of a sudden, she started getting half a shoe box full of junk mail every day," he said.
Martin Davis, an inspector with the U.S. Postal Service's Washington Division, investigates such operations.
These junk-mail companies are very profitable, he says.
"It's a science," Davis said. "They identify people who fall for this stuff, some people just can't throw it away."
While there are different ways for these companies to make money, John's mother lost hers gradually.
She would respond to letters telling her to send in $20 in order to learn how to get her grand prize.
"What happened was, she'd write checks for like $20 or $15, then sign the slip of paper and send them in," said John, who now has power of attorney and handles her finances. "Then the people would use her signature to debit more money from her account."
Jackie Ruble, branch manager of a local BB&T, said banks act as the "middle man" between a customer and a business.
"Banks assume that clients have given their OK when money is taken out," Ruble said. "If not and the customer gets a statement and sees unauthorized debits, they come and tell us and we investigate it."
Ruble said the best way to avoid these situations is to safeguard personal information.
"It's an electronic world," she said. "Never sign anything, never agree to anything or your setting yourself up for a hard time."
The best thing for fraud victims to do, Ruble said, is to close the account.
"I know it's a lot of work," she said. "But if you don't then you're going to keep getting hit."
After John realized that his mother's account was being debited, he said he tried everything to prevent his mother from receiving junk mail.
"I called the police but they said they can't do anything," he said. "I called the post office, but they said they can't not deliver the mail."
Sgt. Darrell English of the Stafford County Sheriff's Office said his agency lacks the jurisdiction and manpower to pursue scams such as these.
"It's not illegal to send a sweepstakes," English said.
English said the police will take a report from victims, but that there's really nothing else the police can legally due in terms of pursuing companies.
"It's not that we don't want to do anything about it," he said. "It ties our hands to do anything about it."
Davis said it's difficult to catch and prosecute these companies because they operate from outside of the country.
"For the most part, the operators are in Canada and are just using our mail to exploit the system," he said.
Regardless of the return mailing address on the envelopes of sweepstakes and junk mail, Davis said the mail goes back to a commercial mail receiving agency which will ship the bulk mail out of the country.
"A lot of the time, it's just a guy receiving it and sending it along to scheme operators," Davis said.
Although these companies operate abroad, Davis said his organization will still take complaints and pursue investigations on scams.
While the postal inspector can investigate scams, the local post office is powerless to stop the delivery of junk mail.
Al Colon, customer service supervisor at the Falmouth post office, said the Postal Service legally has to deliver mail.
"We do get calls from people," Colon said. "They tell us that they don't want to receive any more junk mail so we give them an address where they can have their bulk mail sent."
Tom Gallagher, president and CEO of the Better Business Bureau Serving Central Virginia, said the elderly often fall prey to sweepstakes letters and scam mail.
"Some of these scams look like they're real," he said. "Most of them are drawn off of foreign banks."
Gallagher said that once a person sends away to one of these letters, they are then going to automatically be inundated with more letters.
"Once you respond to one of those things, the value of your name increases exponentially," he said. "They will start selling your name back and forth."
John agreed.
"My mother's name has been out on the 'sucker list,'" he said. "Since she responded to one, they think she's gonna respond to more now."
In fact, the terms and conditions on many of the pieces of mail John's mom received reserve the right to "make our mailing list available to companies whose products or services might be of interest to you."
Not only do these companies have the right to sell their mailing lists to other companies, they also reserve the right to advertise under "a variety of graphic representations and techniques for availability."
John's mother, for example, receives 10 to 15 pieces of mail a day that are from the same company but with different colors, styles and names.
"They look very lifelike and very valid," Gallagher said. "But they're not and once you respond to one, you're done."
Davis said it isn't easy to get off of the mailing list.
"The easiest solution is to shred it," he said. "If you haven't responded to the past three or four mailings, you'll fall off of the mailing list and your name will become less valuable. It costs them money to send mail without any response."
Eileen Thompson, help-line manager of the Alzheimer's Association, said the best way to help an elderly loved one stop responding to mail is to make sure they don't receive it.
"To avoid that form of fraud, the best thing to do is to divert mail to avoid them from having the temptation," she said.
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Avoiding scams State and federal authorities make the following suggestions for dealing with sweepstakes scams: Don't respond to a sweepstakes or lottery letter in the first place. If you have already responded and are receiving large amounts of junk mail, tear them up and do not respond. The companies will see that you are no longer sending them checks and they will cut their losses and ultimately stop mailing you letters. The best way to stop debits from your checking account is To keep relatives from being duped, contact your local post office and ask them to route the mail to a bulk mail account. It will be routed to a box where you can go pick it up before anyone else in your household has a chance to respond to it. To protect family members with Alzheimer's disease, try to obtain power of attorney over |