SMITHFIELD — When Genevieve Woodall got the call last December, she wasn’t quite sure what to think. A woman named “Sylvia Gates” of the “Consumer Protection Agency” was on the phone asking if Woodall knew she had won a $200,000 sweepstakes.

Woodall, 83, had her doubts, but it was a lot of money, and the woman referred her to another man, Christopher Nolan, for confirmation. They told her the first winner hadn’t collected his prize, that the taxes had been paid and the check was waiting to be mailed. They had her on the hook.

“They throw out all these words,” said Woodall, who loves singing and conducts a Bible study on Wednesday mornings. “They’re very predatory.”

All they needed was a little money to have the check insured by a bondsman and mailed by a courier, Vincent Mills. As soon as Woodall wired the transfer fee, they said, her big prize would be on the way. They wanted $1,200, via Western Union, sent to a woman named Glenda in San Jose, Costa Rica.

“It’s just a web of lies,” Woodall sighed, sitting in the parlor of her Smithfield home, which has been in the family since she was a little girl. “I fell for this; I can’t believe so many people did.”

Hours after she wired the money, the scammers called to say they had the cash, and they gave her the “insurance and tracking numbers” for the check. And they reminded her, again, to keep her winnings hush-hush.

After they had Woodall’s money, the scammers kept bouncing her around a head-spinning network of supposed officials and confusing explanations. The following Monday, she got a call from a man named “Mark Cole,” who claimed to be a U.S. Customs official. The courier and check were being held until she paid a $2,500 excise tax, he said.

This time, Woodall didn’t buy it. “I thought, when did a U.S. check have to be taxed to leave Costa Rica?” she said. She told the man she wouldn’t pay. “Who has my money is the big question. A lesson learned the hard way,” she wrote at the end of the notes she had been keeping.

Woodall is still frustrated by the loss, but now she just wants to make sure no one else falls for such scams. “I don’t know why I didn’t think further,” she said. “They have everything; you can’t verify their name, you can’t verify their addresses.”

Since then, Woodall’s name and address have been passed along and sold by rings of scammers; the letters are spread across her coffee table, each telling her she needs to give anywhere from $5 to $300 to get her money.

She has even received another call from a man she suspects is the same scammer from before. “Well, pretty soon it becomes harassment,” Woodall said.

Many fraud artists sell their victims’ information, said Noelle Talley, spokeswoman for the N.C. Attorney General’s Office. “It can start with a letter you get in the mail, it can start with a phone call from a telemarketer,” Talley said. “Once you’ve responded to one, they sell their call lists and mailing lists.”

Woodall said the criminals were shameless; one told her he wanted her to get the money because she reminded him of his mother and that he liked her voice.

“I said that’s really funny; he doesn’t know me any more than I know him,” Woodall laughed. The scammers often use high-pressure tactics meant to confuse their victims, pulling the wool over their eyes with flashes of money, a network of official-sounding names and sometimes even counterfeit checks.

“There was a real urgency in the guy’s voice when he said to get down to Western Union,” Woodall said of one of the later scams. That same man hung up with a “f- you” when she said she wouldn’t pay. They’re persistent too. Lt. Chris Strickland said the Johnston County Sheriff’s Office had seen an increase in scams and financial crimes in the past four to five months.

“It’s amazing to me; the economy’s already bad as it is, then you’ve got citizens that need every bit of the money they can get, just like all of us do,” he said. “When they get an offer like that in the mail, they react to it.”

Talley said the Attorney General’s Office had also received more complaints lately. “In general, when the economy goes down there’s an increase in all kinds of crimes related to making money or winning money,” she said.

The problem is that the scams are international, and the con artists leave few tracks. The scammers prefer Western Union money transfers, which are hard to track because they don’t require the recipient to present ID.

Woodall contacted Dorothy Strickland at the Attorney General’s office after she realized her mistake.

Strickland said she would contact Costa Rican authorities, but didn’t offer much hope of recovering Woodall’s $1,200, nor the $83 Western Union fee.

Because enforcement is so hard, N.C. law agencies stress prevention, Talley said. “Once people send their money it’s very difficult to get it back,” she said.

Looking back, Woodall says she missed obvious warning signs. A pamphlet at the Western Union office at Food Lion even listed many of the omens of mail fraud.

Now, though, she says it’s just another life lesson. “You grow up trusting people, taking their word, and then you realize you can’t do that for everybody because you’re not on the same page of ethics,” she said. “Their day of reckoning is coming.”