If this doesn’t enrage you, I’m not sure what will.

Earlier this week, I wrote about con men running a Publishers Clearing House scam. A number of people in the area have been targets.

That particular scam, in which people are asked to transfer money by way of Green Dot Money Cards, was inept. The callers’ inability to speak English made the scam almost comical.

That column prompted a call from Michelle Mayer at the Indiana attorney general’s office, warning that there are more sophisticated versions of the scam. One city woman had been taken for $99,000, and a man from the region had been scammed out of thousands of dollars.

The attorney general’s office isn’t naming the victims because it doesn’t want to make them the target of other scams, including recovery schemes in which people claim they get victims’ money back – for a fee.

The scam targeting the local woman was particularly maddening because the scammers used the names of real police and FBI agents and used spoofing software to make it appear they were calling from actual police and FBI phone numbers.

The scam started with a call from someone claiming to be from the FBI. The caller said the woman had won the Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes, but that a mailroom employee had intercepted a letter notifying her she has won and stolen the prize, claiming she had died and he was the heir. The story was that the employee sent the prize money out of the country.

The bogus FBI agent said the woman could collect her winnings, but she had to pay $9,000 in taxes, fees and duties to get the money.

The woman balked and actually called various officials, who warned her it was almost certainly a scam.

The next day, someone claiming to be Lt. Dan Meeks with the Fort Wayne police, called, warning her that she was the target of a scam. Then, the same man called again the next day, though, saying he was mistaken, that this wasn’t a scam, that it appeared she had really won the sweepstakes.

So the woman wired $9,000 to Spain in three different transactions over three days, expecting to get a huge prize.

Later someone claiming to be a customs agent called, saying he had a large check for her, but that she had to pay federal taxes of $30,000, so she took out a bank loan and wired that money. Then the same man called again, saying she owed another $60,000 in other duties, taxes and IRS penalties, so she took out another $60,000 loan and wired that money to Canada.

The only reason she wasn’t taken for more is that the bank, which had no idea what was happening, refused to lend her more when she tried to borrow another $78,000.

Meanwhile, a man from North Manchester has fallen for a similar scam but refuses to accept that he is being conned, despite warnings from the attorney general’s office and others. Mayer says he has been taken for at least $18,000 and possibly as much as $60,000.

Lori LaBundy, the program director at Forensic Nursing Specialties in Fort Wayne, which among other things counsels seniors on how to avoid scams, said the scammers groomed the woman like any predator to gain her trust.

LaBundy said red flags should have gone up at the bank when the woman started making large, repeated withdrawals from her account and started taking out large loans.

One thing is certain. No sweepstakes of any kind requires people to pay money in order to get a prize.

And as for Publishers Clearing House, that company never notifies any winner over the phone. What is called a prize patrol shows up unannounced at winners’ doors with a check, and the prize patrol never asks for money.

The best advice, LaBundy said, is for children to keep their elderly parents informed, and for friends to watch out for each other.