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"Congratulations!!!" the July letter began. "You are one of ten people that won a total some (sic) of $180,000 in this years' (sic) Superdraw."

That notification from the so-called "Australian Lottery" was followed by phone calls urging the elderly Greensboro gentleman to claim his prize by first wiring a total of more than $6,000 to the lottery's "regional office" in Canada to cover "currency fluctuations."

I guess you don't need Mapquest to know where this story is going.

In short, there was no lottery. He would never again see the $6,000 — let alone the $180,000 jackpot. And as he spread the meandering trail of paperwork out on the coffee table of his tidy, modest home in south Greensboro the other day, there was just one word for the way he felt.

And that word bore repeating.

"I was stupid, stupid, stupid. But for someone like me, to think you won that much money, you think about all you could do," said the 73-year-old immigrant, who asked that his name not be used in the paper.

For one thing, his wife doesn't know about this. But mostly, he's embarrassed — even though he's not the first to be hoodwinked by this particular counterfeit-check scam. Far from it: The Federal Trade Commission in 2006 alone received 45,587 complaints about bogus lottery rip-offs, according to a spokeswoman.

How exactly do they work? As his refugee sponsor Mike Linnane listened, the man explained how it all began. First came a check made out to him for $4,850 to cover "insurance" on the winnings, said the letter from "Fortune Merit Award Inc."

The letter said his winnings had been assigned to "one of our well-trained Claim Analysts by (sic) name Mr. Ken Williams...He will work with you until your winning (sic) is delivered." The letter gave a phone number to call and retrieve a "security code" that would allow the man to deposit the $4,850 in his personal bank account.

After doing so, he was then instructed to withdraw the funds and get a MoneyGram, but not at his bank: "They said to go to Wal-Mart," he recalled. "They told me do not let the bank know, because they will try to tax it."

The man wired the money to the Ontario address on the letter, plus another $980 they required in "fees." Shortly thereafter, he was notified by his own bank, Bank of America, that Fortune Merit's check had bounced.

At that point, the man had already wired more than $6,000 to the fraudulent "lottery" operators, and now owed his bank for insufficient funds.

FTC spokeswoman Jackie Dizdul said, "That's one new twist, a counterfeit check. When the check bounces, the consumer is not only responsible for the check they wrote (using those funds), but for the money that is no longer in the account."

In the case of the Greensboro resident, who lives on Social Security and retired from a nearby poultry-processing plant after a workplace accident cost him part of his hand, there's little hope for getting his money back.

His American sponsor, Linnane, took up a collection from the local chapter of the U.S. Army Special Forces Association to pay off the overdrawn checking account. Meanwhile, the phone number for Fortune Merit Award Inc. appears to have been disconnected.

According to the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, Canada-based lottery scams have been rampant, and despite foreign lottery mailings being destroyed by the truckload, enough letters get through to bilk U.S. consumers out of $120 million per year.

The FTC's Dizdul said consumers should keep in mind that selling foreign lottery chances is illegal. Moreover, she noted, "You can't win a lottery you didn't enter."

Want to report a scam?

Visit http://www.ftc.gov or call (877) FTC-HELP.

Contact Lorraine Ahearn at 373-7334 or lahearn@news-record.com