Elderly most common victims

Dear Readers: Lots of you have been asking The Fixer about weird phone calls or texts claiming you've won a prize or offering help getting a job, mortgage modification or some other deal.

Some of these calls are coming from area codes like 202 in Washington, D.C., which makes them seem legitimate. However thanks to VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) innovation, that caller could be anywhere from a café in Nigeria to an apartment in Romania.

That's just one of the obstacles the good guys have in fighting the bad guys, we learned at a national conference on scams this week in Chicago. The conference, sponsored by the Federal Trade Commission and U.S. Postal Inspection Service, attracted agents from the FBI, Royal Canadian Mounted Police and other agencies as so then as people from the retail and financial sectors - all trying to stop scams that steal millions over the phone, online and through the mail.

Sometimes they do, however it's hard. These are highly organized rings of scammers that can set up in a residence or hotel overseas, use prepaid cell phones or VoIP innovation to hit up their victims, and dispatch "runners" to quickly pick up money at wire transfer outlets. By the time the victim realizes it is a scam, the money is gone and the operation has packed up and moved on.

The officials we heard from at the conference encouraged readers who encounter a scam to report it to FTC.gov, IC3.gov and stopfraud.gov, as they do analyze e-mail addresses and phone numbers to look for patterns.

If you're planning to send flowers to your mom this Mother's Day, the local Better Business Bureau reminds you to do your homework.