Albert Lea resident Mike Lee, who happens to be running for Commissioner District 5, received a letter in the mail saying he had won a $125,000 sweepstakes. There was a check in the letter for $4,785.

The letter said he needed to deposit the check and then send a money order for $2,000 for tax purposes. Lee spotted it as a scam, so he called the Albert Lea Police Department.

He described the scam to the detective he reached. The detective told him that more than likely the scammer was from out of the country and the police department couldn’t do anything about it.

That left Lee frustrated, so he did a reverse search on the phone number, finding it was a cell phone. He called the cell phone company and the bank for the fake check. They also told him nothing could be done.

Frustrated further, he called the guy and bugged him again and again. The scammer had an area code for south central Ontario. Lee hoped the scammer would abandon that number.

Here is what went wrong: It is disappointing that the Albert Lea Police Department couldn’t have been more helpful. Sure, our cops likely wouldn’t be able to solve or address that sort of international crime, but they should be trained well enough to point a citizen caller in the right direction.

It wasn’t until Lee told this newspaper about his runaround did he learn the proper agency he needed to reach was the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office. It has trained analysts to handle calls about scammers. Every law enforcement agency should know the hot line. It is (800) 657-3787.

Furthermore, the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office’s Web site has an entire section devoted to scams. It is accessed easily from the home page. The site’s address is http://www.ag.state.mn.us/.

The analyst would have recognized the sort of scam as a fake check scam, or sometimes called an advanced check scam. Reporting the scam, even if the state can’t catch this particular scammer, helps the state keep track of the methods. The state attorneys general work together to catch the bad guys, and often in cooperation with other governments.

This should be common knowledge among law enforcement officers by now.