If it looks too good ...

If you think scams are just in e-mal spam, "Deposit a check for $300 in this account and the prince of Nairobi will send you $100,000 and you will save my family," think again.

Let's imagine for a moment the typical retired Toronto couple. Let's call them Mr. and Mrs. Typical, especially since they told me they didn't want their actual names used if I told their story. And apologies if there is a Typical family in Toronto. This isn't about you.

One day, Mr. Typical gets an offer in the mail to take a chance on winning $125,000 if he would just enter the contest for $21. So, he sends a check, eventually gets back $2 plus some change and his real reward is just beginning.

Because Mrs. Typical and Mr. Typical are now targets of the scam industry.

No lie, there is an entire world out there dedicated to scamming people, getting a buck here, a couple bucks there, maybe some credit card numbers and, whoopee, they make a living.

There are no prizes.

The Typicals have been harassed by daily - even hourly - phone calls and Mr. Typical displays a 2-inch thick folder of contest junk he's received.

"That's just what I haven't thrown away," he said. He figures because he entered that one "contest," if it really was a contest, he wound up on a list shared by various scammers as a viable target. The mail and calls keep on coming.

There's the $4,500 check that labels a real insurance company in Texas but a bogus account. Just cash it, the letter says, and the rest of your prize will be coming.

Or the one said to be covering the foreign winner taxes for a prize from the United Kingdom. It lists an apprently fictional insurance company in Idaho.

Start looking closer. There are no return addresses on the envelopes or on the letters.

Look a little closer and you can notice that these real-mail spammers are edging into identity theft.

Go ahead, make your entry with your Visa or MasterCard. Just write in the number in these boxes. Thanks. And you have a chance at....

Not really the promised $1 million. Probably at having your ID stolen, your credit wrecked and bills wracked up in your name all over the place. Some prize.

And the mail just keeps on coming. "Send $23.99 for a chance at $10,000."

And there are the phone calls.

Tricky stuff, too. One very official looking business-sized envelope in Mr. Typical's file is manila with black printing. In place of a return address are the words "Unclaimed Funds Bureau, Board of Commissioners." Wow. Maybe the county is giving me a deal ... nooo. It's just a scam from some faceless, nameless scammer somewhere out there, asking you to enter a contest, "just give us your personalized code found on this handy form and if it matches our winning code, you get money."

Or maybe you should send your tax-deductible gift to us, a children's cancer group.

Except, and this one really angers me, scamming in the name of sick kids, it's not real.

That's not to say you shouldn't donate to causes that are real, but know the difference.

In looking at the Typicals' mail file, I notice the pattern. No return addresses. Send us money and we'll send you a chance to win more money.

Don't send anyone money unless you're buying something, placing an order, I figure.

And that's the advice the Typicals received from the Ohio Attorney General's Office, too. Don't send money. Don't talk to the phone harassers.

The postal authorities told Mr. Typical there's a room filled with junk mail like this at the average post office. No harm in it being sent, after all.

Just be wary. The old maxim, the one repeated by your grandfather, your mother, your aunt Sue holds true: If it looks too good to be true, it is.

Mr. and Mrs. Typical are out a total of $21 and face aggravation on the phone and in the mailbox. It could have been far worse.

Just because mail looks official doesn't mean it is.

If you've got elderly relatives or friends, keep them aware of this stuff. The Typicals called me because they wanted to be sure others were aware of what can come in the mail.

(Giannamore, a resident of Toronto, is business editor of the Herald-Star. His e-mail address is pgiannamore@heraldstaronline.com.)