Scam in the mail?

Jerry Woodard said he receives hundreds of cases of mail fraud and scams from customers each year.

However, the Fremont Postmaster said he's sure there's many more that he doesn't get to see and turn over to postal inspectors.

He summed up many of the scams — sweepstakes scams — in some pretty plain English, as he does when speaking to groups.

"If I asked to give you $1,000 today, would you take it? Most people say ‘yes'" he said. "When I ask if you'd give me your credit card number today to get $1,000 tomorrow, the answer's always ‘no.'"

One of the things the Deceptive Mail Prevention and Enforcement Act prohibits is, "that the recipient must make a purchase in order to receive future sweepstakes mailings."

The Direct Marketing Association in cooperation with the U.S. Postal Service defines a sweepstakes mailing as "an advertising or promotional device by which items of value (prizes) are awarded to participating consumers by chance with no purchase or ‘entry fee' required in order to win."

"They used to say, ‘You are a winner.' Now they say ‘You may be a winner,'" Woodard said. "If you question any piece of mail at all, get it to us. We have professionals to determine if something is legitimate or not.

"If (a company) is asking for money or anything to be in a contest, then it's not a legitimate contest," he said. "Contests are free and random. If they're asking for money or (personal) information to join a contest, beware."

Sweepstakes scams are just one of the items postal inspectors deal with every day.

Chain letters are another — and just as illegal.

"In these, you're sending someone $1 and adding you name to a list of names who (theoretically) will send $1 to you," Woodard said. "The postal inspectors did the math and by the 13th mailing there would be more letters than the population of the world."

Most of these chain letters ask for the recipient to send money and send the letter to six friends. Those six friends are to do the same and send the letter to another six friends each.

If each person asked to participate in a chain letter did, 13,060,694,016 letters would be sent — and that would be if they stopped at 13 cycles.

To put that number into perspective, the U.S. population is almost 300 million and the world's population is just more than 4 billion.

"Generally, the whole concept is to prey on people of vulnerability," Woodard said. "If you send (one of these scams) to someone who is less fortunate, the chance at a lot of money is going to mean more to them."

He said not to simply throw away any letters you receive that you may feel are a scam.

"Take it seriously because each letter is a body of evidence," Woodard said. "If you throw it away, it stops us from being able to solve the crime. Get it to us (at the Fremont Post Office), we'll get it to the inspectors and they'll tell if it's of value."

He said last year postal inspectors were able to capture and return more than $1 billion obtained through postal scams.

"Basically, about every scam there is out there, I've seen from time to time," Woodard said. "Stuffing envelopes is a real common one — people say you can make $1,500 a day doing it. When you send them the money, what they send out is a letter telling you to do what they just did (and get other people duped)."

A scam that's come about in recent years involves companies saying they can fix your credit for a price, he said.

"Your credit history is a fact — it's not something someone else can make right for a fee," Woodard said. "Time repairs your credit because of the laws. There are legal ways to do it, but most of these people (who send the credit repair letters) aren't lawyers."

Fees for scholarships, postal exams or other jobs and charities are other things people can be scammed by, he said.

"If they ask for fees up front, it's time to be suspicious," Woodard said. "Anytime you give to charity, know who you're giving your money to."

"There are two kind of scams — they either ask for (personal) information or money," he said. "If anybody's asking for money or information to join a contest, beware."