BEWARE OF CON ARTISTS ON THE TELEPHONE

Reports have surfaced recently of con artists turning to the telephone in hopes of persuading unsuspecting people to send them their hard-earned money through a variety of carefully devised schemes.

It is, after all, easier for these swindlers to hide at the opposite end of a telephone line than to go out on the street as they used to do, find a victim and cheat them out of their money through a multitude of con games. Such face-to-face schemes, which often took place in public places, exposed the con artist to too many people who might be able to identify him. The telephone, on the other hand, is a key to the home of many a potential victim, and the con artist can remain faceless.

Cape Girardeau police have warned people about strangers on the telephone promising prizes too good to be true after a woman was nearly bilked out of money in a telephone fraud. Had it not been for the woman's granddaughter, who saw through the scheme, the woman probably would have sent the caller the money he requested. Another time a local woman was cheated out of nearly $17,000 over a three-month period by a man from Buffalo, N.Y., who is now swerving seven years in prison for his crime.

The Federal Trade Commission estimates that nationwide consumers lose $1 billion a year to deceptive peddling of goods and services over the phone. Most of the victims are elderly people, who spend much of their time at home where they can easily be reached by telephone. Many live alone and have no one to seek an opinion from. Often they are the easiest to deceive.

The most common approach of the swindler is to tell the unsuspecting victim that he or she has won a prize and must send money to pay for taxes or fees before the prize can be sent. They'll ask for credit card numbers, bank account numbers and Social Security numbers if their requests for cash fall on deaf ears. None of those numbers should ever be given out over the telephone unless the person knows for certain who is on the other end of the line.

On the Internet, people are warned when they are about to buy something or disclose account numbers, and the buyer can go to a secure site to list such information. There is no such warning on the telephone.

The best advice is if the caller's offer is too good to be true, in all likelihood it is too good to be true.