Sometimes scam artists can dupe multiple people into one scam -- stealing one person’s identity to obtain credit, buying products with that stolen credit and shipping them somewhere else and then corralling yet another person into a phony “work from home” scam to retrieve the goods and distribute them on the black market.

That’s what happened to Debra Paradis of Bow, who fell victim to such a scam in the summer of 2006.

She met Tony in an online chat room. He turned out to be a man who eventually hoodwinked her into receiving packages at her house.

“I’m educated, I know about fraud,” said Paradis, 42. “I was depressed, I was going through a divorce, and (Tony) was someone I could tell my problems to.”

Tony told her he’d escaped a bad marriage in Canada and fled to England with his son. He said he hoped to move to the U.S. someday and visit Paradis. He seemed “suave, but not manipulative,” said Paradis.

A month later, Tony asked for her address -- he wanted to mail her a package.

Paradis thought that was odd -- but after three weeks, she relented. After she gave him her address, he told her someone would pick the packages up at her house once they arrived.

Soon two packages arrived at her door. Curious, Paradis opened them and found printer cartridges. Before she could report it, a Bow police officer knocked on her door, saying police had received a report that fraudulent credit cards were being used and products were shipped to her address.

“I said, ‘Take them, I don’t want anything to do with this,’” said Paradis. She sent a message to Tony, telling him that if he wanted his merchandise, he could contact the police.

“Just because someone says ‘I’m so and so,’ it doesn’t mean they actually are,” said Michael Blanchard, a 20-year U.S. Postal inspector in Manchester.

Blanchard said con artists looking to separate you from your money could “sell ice cubes to Eskimos.”

He recently spoke to Bow’s Neighborhood Watch group. In the town of less than 10,000 residents, the police department receives about one report of fraud a week, said Lt. Dave Girard.

According to Blanchard, there are 700,000 victims of fraud each year in the U.S. Those numbers include victims of identify theft, fraudulent bank checks/gift cheques/money orders and lottery scams.

On average, it takes 14 months for people to clear their name, Blanchard said.

“There are lots of victims, and there’s a lot of money,” Blanchard said. “This affects all ages, all genders, all everything.”