PENDLETON – The Nigerian letter scam is back, appearing by e-mail on computers throughout Umatilla County.

It seems to resurface every year in Pendleton, said Police Chief Stuart Roberts, who has received five e-mails trying to scam him in the past two weeks.

“There’s been a number of people in the last several years around here who have been stung by this operation,” Roberts said. “Every year we get people burned by it.”

The scam takes various forms but often asks for a victim’s bank account number under the premise of transferring massive amounts of money through it to an overseas account.

The contact person, who usually claims to be a high-ranking government or bank official in Africa, tells the victims they’ll be compensated for their help.

Victims think they’ll be getting free money. Instead, their bank account gets decimated, or when they send money away, it simply disappears.

“The bottom line is, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is,” Roberts said.

He cautioned people against giving out personal information to strangers who call, e-mail, or fax.

“If they do respond and get burned, the local police department can’t help them,” Roberts said. “It’s beyond our jurisdiction, and we don’t have the ability to do that.”

Elderly people, or those on hard times, are often the ones who fall victim to the Nigerian letter scam.

The FBI investigates Nigerian letter scams, Roberts said.

The scam originated as a postal letter scam in the 1980s, and evolved with the times. It now includes cell phone and phone contacts, e-mail and fax messages.

For more information, got to www1.ifccfbi.gov, the Internet Fraud Complaint Center, a joint project of the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center.