Art Larsen, 78, was drinking a cup of coffee Tuesday when the phone rang and a man speaking with a heavy foreign accent said he was from the U.S. government and needed some account numbers to deposit a $7,000 government grant awarded to Larsen.

“I was an accountant for 40 years, so I knew it was a scam right away,” Larsen said. “I know the government doesn’t give you a grant unless you apply for one.”

However, Larsen said he decided to play along to gather evidence to report to the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office.

“My concern is they are praying on senior citizens,” Larsen said. “There are a lot of senior citizens living in the La Pine area, and if they are targeting this area, somebody might be gullible enough to fall for this scam. All the caller knew was my phone number and my home address, which they could have gotten out of a phone book.”

Nancy Schassen, office assistant at the sheriff’s substation in La Pine, said that when Larsen reported the call, her first priority was to determine if a crime had been committed, based on whether any money had been taken out of his accounts.

She said it’s not against the law to make calls like the one Larsen received unless the caller actually gets some money from the intended victim.

Schassen said the La Pine substation receives numerous calls about phone and Internet scams, but this was the first time she’d heard of a caller claiming to need account numbers to award a government grant.

Oregonians reported losing nearly $2 million to scams last year, according to Tony Green, spokesman for the Oregon Department of Justice.

His advice if someone calls, e-mails or sends a text message requesting account or personal information: “Don’t do it.”

Never give account numbers, Social Security numbers, PIN numbers, or any other personal information over the phone or via e-mail, Green said.

E-mail hijacking

Central Oregon apparently was targeted by other phone and e-mail scams Tuesday.

Two area churches — the Holy Redeemer Catholic Church in La Pine and the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Central Oregon in Bend — also were the targets of e-mail scams from people claiming to be church members who had their bags containing credit cards and passports stolen while traveling in Europe, leaving them stranded. Those e-mails included phone contact numbers in the United Kingdom, where people receiving the e-mails were asked to call and arrange to send money, supposedly to pay hotel bills and purchase airline tickets home to the United States.

Green said the church cases fall under a category of scams called e-mail hijackings.

“An e-mail hijacking is where scammers get hold of an e-mail sent out by an individual CC’d (copied) to lots of people, and then the scammer creates a similar e-mail address and sends it to everyone on the CC list, trying to trick them into sending money,” Green said.

Chela Sloper, whose e-mail address with the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship was hijacked, said she had no idea how the thieves got her e-mail address, but she received numerous calls from church members who received the phony e-mails and called, alarmed that she had gone overseas and gotten robbed, which of course never happened.

“In addition to sending out the scam e-mails, they also erased all of my e-mails and my contact list,” said Sloper, a church administrator.

“I was advised to change the password on my e-mail account, and I contacted Yahoo to see if there’s a way they can restore my e-mails and contact lists,” Sloper said.

Phony phone calls

Larsen said the call he received came in around 10:15 a.m. Tuesday. The caller told him he could receive a $7,000 grant as a direct deposit to his bank, and that the deposit could be made in one of three ways: with his bank account number, or a debit or credit card number.

“They said if I would give them one of those numbers, they would deposit the $7,000 directly into my account,” Larsen said.

Larsen said the red flags went up for him when the caller requested the account numbers.

“You never give out your bank account number,” Larsen said.

When he objected to giving out his account numbers and asked that the grant money be sent by mail instead of by direct deposit, Larsen said the scammers told him the government had been having a problem with checks getting lost in the mail, so the grant funds were only available through direct deposit.

As soon as he hung up, Larsen called the Sheriff’s Office.

The most common phone scams Schassen has heard hitting the La Pine area relate to phony lottery winnings, often from states or countries where the victim has never lived, as well as the grandchild-in-need scam, in which the scammer claims his car broke down or he’s been arrested,, often in Canada, and needs money for car repairs, bail or transportation home.

“What I always tell people is, ‘Don’t give out any information. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably isn’t true,’ ” Schassen said.

If you didn’t enter a lottery or a contest, and you didn’t apply for a grant, and somebody calls up and says you are a winner, it probably isn’t true, she said.

In some cases, scammers make follow-up phone calls or e-mails pressuring victims to send money. If that happens, Schassen recommends telling the caller you have turned the matter over to law enforcement and any further calls would be referred to the police.

“That will usually stop the calls,” Schassen said.

Oregon Attorney General John Kroger this month issued an alert regarding fake Japanese disaster relief charities.

Scam artists are becoming increasingly adept at exploiting disasters for personal gain and have started sending mass “charity relief” text messages requesting credit card numbers and other sensitive information, according to a news release from Kroger.

To ensure you are donating to a legitimate charity, Kroger recommends checking the Department of Justice database of registered organizations by calling 971-673-1880 or searching online at www.guidestar.org or www .charitynavigator.org.

Avoiding scams

Don’t give out account numbers or personal information over the phone or Internet Report scams to the Oregon Department of Justice Consumer Hotline: 877-877-9392

Online Reporting: www.doj.state .or.us