the Attorney General's Office has a Consumer Protection Section that offers
free, informal mediation in consumer transaction disputes. Consumer transactions
range from everyday goods and services, such as buying groceries and getting a
haircut, to mail solicitations such as sweepstakes offers.

Many people are familiar with sweepstake scams, in which someone sends out a
letter falsely telling someone that they've won a prize and they need to send a
small monetary amount to claim that prize. In actuality, Armentrout said, what
the recipient of the letter is doing is giving the sender money to enter the
recipient into a list of other sweepstakes.

But con artists have made a more modern twist on this scam by mailing out
checks and telling the recipient that he or she has just received a small
portion of the grand prize. The con artist then tells the recipient that in
order to claim the rest of the prize, the recipient must send a processing fee
back to the sweepstakes company, which they can do by cashing the check and
sending some of the money back.

A typical processing fee she listed could be $6,000 out of a $10,000 check.

However, the checks sent out are counterfeit and after the bank realizes the
check was not legitimate, which is typically after about a five-day holding
period, the bank informs the recipient that the check was fraudulent and that
the person owes all the money back to the bank, she said.

Of course, by that time, most of the money is on its way back to the con
artist.

One question she said people should ask when receiving such a letter is
whether he or she ever entered a contest.

Another thing to remember is that under Ohio law, a person cannot be expected
to pay any money to win in a sweepstakes.

"Ohio law says you do not have to pay to win. Period," she said.

And even if the sweepstakes is run somewhere outside of Ohio, by mailing a
letter to Ohio, she said the sender must comply with Ohio mailing laws.

Two other things to check in sweepstakes mailings, she said, are the mailing
address and postmark. She said most scams are postmarked from Canada and often
have return addresses in places near the international border.

People should be extremely careful when dealing with possible fraudulent
activity, she said, because the victims almost never get their money back.

"That's the horrific part of these frauds," she said.