SCAM TIME IN VALLEY SENIORS LURED BY OFFER OF 'CONTEST WINNINGS'.

Byline: Josh Kleinbaum Staff Writer

When Bill and Louise Cornwell got a letter from a Canadian company saying they'd won $92,000, they thought it could be true. Bill had just taken a trip to Canada, where he'd entered some sort of contest at a local business.

The Cornwells exchanged a series of letters and e-mails with a company called Regal Financial Services Ltd., and eventually received a check for $2,557.11, with instructions to deposit the check and wire the identical sum back to the company to receive the full winnings.

That's when they discovered the check was forged, and they were targets of a new scam aimed at senior citizens in the San Fernando Valley.

``You get excited when you get a letter saying you won $92,000,'' said Louise Cornwell, 65. ``We'd like to believe it was legitimate, but now that I look at all the things that didn't add up ...''

The Cornwells took the check to their local Washington Mutual branch and asked the teller to determine whether it was legitimate. After inspecting the check and calling Bank of the West, which issued it, a bank official told them it was a forgery.

The scam artists are using forged check from a La Palma company called Multi Sales Inc., a wholesale distributor of garage door and gate operators. The checks appear real, with signatures of two Multi Sales employees, although the street addresses are incomplete.

Officials from Multi Sales said eight forged checks have been deposited or turned in to area banks by victims, all of whom live in the Valley.

``The signatures are forged,'' said Laurie, the company's controller, who asked that her last name not be used so the culprits have as little information about the company as possible. ``I would guess that somebody found a check, or maybe a check was lost.

``It's caused us a major problem. We can't do banking the way we normally do. They've put a caution on our account.''

The ploy is similar to so-called phishing scams that have become common on the Internet in recent years, including e-mails from Nigeria that inundate junk-mail folders and draw in unsuspecting victims.

A report released this week by America Online and the National Cyber Security Alliance said one in four Internet users receives such e-mails each month, and 70 percent of those who receive them believe they're real.

``This is a new variation,'' said Ken McGuire, a supervisory special agent with the FBI who investigates such scams. ``What they're trying to do is nickel-and-dime people in a way that hides their identity and provides them with this flow of ill-gotten gain.''

The FBI's Los Angeles office receives about 40 complaints a week about such scams, 20 directly to their office and 20 referred by other agencies, McGuire said. But officials said they believe that's just the tip of the iceberg - many victims are too embarrassed to go to the authorities when they've been had.

And it's difficult to track down and prosecute those responsible.

``If it's more than just a couple of times, if there's a number of people that have been duped, there's a strong likelihood we can prosecute the person,'' McGuire said. ``But in many fraud cases, the money is long since spent by the time law enforcement figures out who did it.''

The Canadian lottery scam is prevalent enough that the FBI and the Canadian government have task forces targeting it. A Los Angeles-based FBI agent has been deployed to Vancouver to investigate such claims, Assistant U.S. Attorney Ellyn Lindsay said.

The penalty for a mail or wire fraud conviction could be between 10 years and 15 years in prison, Lindsay said.

``It may be kind of the scam du jour, but things like this have been done in the past, too,'' she said. ``Especially for seniors, it's devastating emotionally. People have been wiped out, elderly people have had to go back to work, and it takes a toll emotionally and even physically.''

Josh Kleinbaum, [phone]

josh.kleinbaum(at)dailynews.com

If you think you've been the victim of a scam, contact the FBI at [phone] or www.fbi.gov; or the Internet Crime Complaint Center at www.ic3.gov.

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Photo:

(color) Bill and Louise Cornwell of Winnetka show some of the correspondence they received during what they thought was a legitimate transaction. It turned out to be a mail scam.

Evan Yee/Staff Photographer