LEWISTON – When Gerry Breton needed cash to pay some medical bills, he placed an ad in hopes of selling a 1959 Ford he had restored.

But the 40-year-old local man got far less than he bargained for when a foreigner offered to buy the mint-green sedan, complete with fuzzy dice.

Breton placed an ad in Uncle Henry’s Swap or Sell It Guide, a 30-year-old weekly compendium of classified ads. The printed version circulates throughout New England and New Brunswick, Canada. He’d had luck with the publication before.

The company launched an online version in 1999, expanding its readership reach beyond the Northeast. So, Breton thought he’d give that a try.

He put a price of $6,000 on his car and waited. He fielded a few inquiries the first two weeks before getting an e-mail message from a man who appeared to be from London.

Breton exchanged eight or nine e-mails with the man over the next month. The man identified himself as a broker and said he had a client who was interested in the car. He said he would send Breton a check for $11,500 that would include shipping and a brokerage fee. He asked that Breton wire the brokerage fee back to the man.

When Breton received a cashier’s check, drawn on a small out-of-town bank, he took it to his credit union and asked them whether it was legitimate. The credit union deposited the check and Breton waited. He later was told the check was counterfeit. The deposit was expunged from his account. That’s when he called police.

Breton said he was suspicious all along.

“I thought there was something fishy from the get-go,” he said.

The man hadn’t haggled over the price, Breton said. Then, when the man tried to send him more money than the asking price, alarms went off again. When the man proposed Breton wire him back money, Breton could smell a scam.

An advisory at the bottom of e-mails that pass through Uncle Henry’s site warns about such arrangements.

“Regard any e-mail request to send a Cashier’s check (usually for more than you are asking and they will trust you to wire the balance to them) as suspicious,” it reads.

Susan Hirsch, support team leader for Uncle Henry’s Web site, said she hears daily from customers about the type of experience Breton encountered. They tend to come in waves, she said.

Called a “Nigerian scam,” named for the North African country where most of such e-mails originated in the early days of the Internet, the details may vary but the underlying ruse is the same, says Lewiston Police Detective Steve MacCallum, who specializes in fraud and white-collar crime. In each case, the person sending the e-mail promises to send a check to the person receiving the e-mail. The sender asks that the receiver wire back a lesser amount. The check, if one is ever sent, turns out to be bogus.

“We’ve seen it on a fairly regular basis the last few years,” MacCallum said.

More recently, another local man who advertised a guitar amplifier for sale in Uncle Henry’s found a $3,000 check in the mail from a buyer who asked him to send back a portion of the money. The check was confirmed as bogus. The man contacted police over the weekend.

Another variation on the theme is the so-called “Canadian lottery,” he said. In that scenario, the victim is informed that he has won the lottery. In order to collect the prize, he needs to wire a processing fee.

“Unfortunately, in today’s world you have to be very cautious,” MacCallum said.

If somebody wants to pay you more than something’s worth, be wary, he said. If you’re expected to wire money to somebody you don’t know, be suspicious.

Breton said police told him there was little likelihood of finding the person or persons who tried to scam him.

Even after the fake check was discovered, the man continued to e-mail Breton, complaining that his client was getting tired of waiting.

Breton was dumbfounded by the man’s brazenness.

“It’s like, you’ve got to be kidding me,” he said.

He e-mailed the man Thursday, telling him he knew all about the scam and had notified police.

“I haven’t heard anything since,” Breton said.

• do not have further contact with the e-mailer;

• report it to the Maine Attorney General’s Office, the Federal Trade Commission and the Internet Fraud Complaint Center;

• deal only with local people you can meet in person;

• avoid deals involving shipping;

• never wire money; and

• never give out personal financial information.

Source: Uncle Henry’s advice to customers