MOULTRIE, Ga. — Friends and family of elderly Americans are being urged to speak to them about scams that have been targeting that segment of the population.

“The office of the (Georgia) Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Unit has received a number of complaints about sweepstakes scams targeting older consumers,” according to that office. “We are urging consumers to get involved and speak with their friends and family about how to avoid this scam and others.”

Attorney General Chris Carr’s office recently created an Older Adult Consumer Protection Guide that can be downloaded for free at the office’s website.

“We have an obligation to protect our older, at-risk citizens, and a conversation about this scam is the best first line of defense,” Carr said.

The elderly, particularly those suffering from dementia or cognitive impairment, can be particularly vulnerable to the scam, the office said.  In the sweepstakes operation scammers contact potential victims by phone, fax, mail or email, and also through pop-up boxes online.

Those targeted are told they have won a large sweepstakes prize, but must pay up-front money such as taxes or fees. The scammer usually asks that money be wired somewhere overseas, but sometimes have a partner in the United States who will collect mailed checks and payments to send to other countries.

“Worse yet, if the con artist finds a consumer who is particularly vulnerable to this scam, such as someone with dementia or cognitive impairment, he/she may contact them repeatedly and convince them to send additional payments,” according to Carr’s office.

“To make matters worse, once a consumer falls prey to a scam like this, their contact information may be sold to other scammers. So, a consumer could quickly become inundated with similar scam phone calls and mail solicitations.”

Among the tips offered are:

• Never pay money to receive a prize. Not only is this a sure sign of a scam, it is a violation of Georgia law.

• Being asked to wire money — especially to a foreign country — is a big red flag.

• Sometimes scammers will add credibility to the scam by sending a check for a few thousand dollars to cover the supposed taxes or fees owed. They will instruct the victim to deposit the check and wire money to them. Don’t be fooled. The check is fake.

That latter circumstance, where a victim finds himself taken for thousands of dollars and doesn’t have the money to make good with the bank has led to financial hardship. And in a worst-case scenario, people have been arrested after their financial institution elected to prosecute, said Sgt. Richard Harris of the Colquitt County Sheriff’s Office.

The victim may receive a check for $4,000 and wire back $2,000 to cover the taxes or other fees for the fake sweepstakes.

“The (scammer’s) check is going to be canceled, it’s going to be no good, so you’re going to be out of the money you sent them,” Harris said.

Scammers seem to cycle around various hooks. During tax season, for example, it was emails purported to be from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service in which the scammer demanded payment — often using a store money card. The emails threatened the receivers with imminent arrest of the funds were not forthcoming.

Another similar scheme involves notifying a potential victim that he or she missed jury duty. Again, the scammer threatens the recipient with jail if money is not transferred.

In another, a person calls an elderly person and pretends to be a relative who has been arrested in another country. The person will claim to be a grandson, for example, who needs money wired to get out of jail.

Once the send button is pressed on a wire transaction, especially one to another country, that money is gone forever, Harris said.

There is, however, one piece of advice that offers protection from nearly any scam:

“If it sounds too good to be true,” Harris said, “it is.”