For Maine agent, scams are familiar but hard to track in foreign countries

Describe a financial scam and Mike Magalski most likely has heard about it.

As the resident agent in charge of the U.S. Secret Service in Portland, it’s his office that attempts to help scam victims recover their funds.

“I see a lot of people losing money,” Magalski said Thursday. “You’d like to think it’s the people who aren’t very smart, but that’s not the case.” He said he has seen professionals get talked into investment schemes and people of all economic and educational backgrounds become involved in scams.

“We’ve had successes, but it’s very difficult if they’re overseas,” he said of his office’s efforts to aid victims.

The U.S. Secret Service works with its counterparts in foreign countries to track down the con artists behind the scams, Magalski said. Some countries, however, do not have diplomatic relations with the U.S. or are not cooperative.

Magalski said his office receives calls daily from people who have lost money or, in the case of a Dover-Foxcroft woman, from the local police department.

A lot of scams now focus on lotteries and inheritance, according to Magalski. The former involves a letter, an e-mail or a telephone call informing a person of a lottery win in a foreign country while the latter involves an e-mail from a foreign resident looking for someone to help recover an inheritance. Usually, a person is asked to send money outright or, in one scenario, pay $5,000 to get $1 million.

Just because someone advertises something on the Internet or has a Web site doesn’t make it legitimate, according to Magalski.

People think they’re in a no-lose situation because they’ve cashed a check sent by a con artist from a foreign country, but they are liable when the check later is returned because it was bogus, Magalski said.

Magalski said if you sell a diamond ring to a neighbor and the check the neighbor writes for the ring has insufficient funds, you can go next door and tell the neighbor to pay up or you can go to the police and file charges. If you sell the same ring to a California resident, you still have law enforcement help in the U.S. to recover the funds. If the same ring is sold in a foreign country and the check, money order or cash is bogus, it becomes much more complicated, he said.

The Internet has opened a new world for the con artist to get into your neighborhood, Magalski said. “It’s opened up opportunities for criminals. The public has to be very careful.”

Magalski recalled one Maine resident who lost $150,000 to a scam. “They keep drawing you in,” he said of the con artists.

Know exactly whom you are talking to before you send money, Magalski said. If in doubt, check with local or state authorities.

“We don’t want to see anyone conned out of their hard-earned money,” he said.

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