When e-mail users receive a questionable message promising a lottery win or zero-percent financing, many immediately toss them aside, well aware they are a hoax.

But e-mail scams are becoming more and more sophisticated, a number of them aimed at touching someone’s heart and encouraging them to make a difference – to help someone in desperate need.

One such e-mail made its way into the heart of Tahlequah, causing local people, even people from around the U.S., to e-mail the Tahlequah Police Department and the Daily Press to ask, “Is this really true?”

The subject line of the e-mail, forwarded to a Daily Press employee, reads, “To My Daughter - by a Oklahoma Police Officer.”

Not only is the officer from Oklahoma, the e-mail promises, but from a Tahlequah school resource officer – Bryan Swim. The body of the e-mail claims the author – “Swim” – is a 29-year-old father, and that he has a daughter named Rachel recently diagnosed with brain cancer.

The e-mail continues, “Not long ago the doctors detected brain cancer in her little body. There is only one way to save her and that is an operation. Sadly we don’t have the money for the operation.”

According to the e-mail, AOL and ZDnet.com track each time the message is sent to someone else, and for everyone who opens the e-mail and sends it (known as “forwarding”) to at least three others, Swim and his family receive 32 cents.

“In my computers class, several students are getting and forwarding an e-mail allegedly from a Bryan Swim of the Tahlequah Police Department,” Tracy Engholm, a Crow Middle School/High School teacher, of Oregon, wrote to the Press. “The kids think that they are helping by forwarding this e-mail. What I want to know is: Is it real? I would like to know so that I can tell the kids one way or the other. Fraud is a big deal on the Internet. My students are middle-school students and are not as circumspect as they should be. I would like to use this as a lesson.”

Swim cleared up the confusion Friday afternoon after being interviewed by a member of Tulsa’s KTUL-TV station. He’s not the 29-year-old father of a 10-year-old girl – though he is a parent of a younger, healthy daughter – and he didn’t send the e-mail; he’s not sure who did or why.

“It’s definitely a hoax,” said Swim. “It started two to three years ago, and I didn’t even have a child at the time.”

Tahlequah Police Chief Steve Farmer said three years worth of investigation into the source of the hoax hasn’t turned up answers.

“I average six e-mails a day [questioning this hoax e-mail],” said Farmer. “A lot of those are saying, ‘We want to take up a donation,’ or, ‘Here’s where he can go to get help.’ We get phone calls daily. Dispatch averages two to three calls a day.”

Swim’s name appears “signed” at the bottom, along with, “Tahlequah, OK Police Dept., School Resource Officer, # 65.”

A spokeswoman from ZDnet.com, one of the Internet sites named inside the e-mail as one of the monetary supporters, said it’s simply false information.

“That e-mail has been around for a long time; it’s definitely a hoax,” the spokeswoman for CNET Networks (ZDnet.com) said.

Unfortunately, she said, someone out in the Internet world created the false e-mail, which quickly spread across the U.S.; it has even been translated in different languages in other countries.

“This e-mail has nothing to do with our company,” said the spokeswoman.

The majority of the message is an emotional poem, apparently written from a parent to his or her son or daughter, with excerpts such as, “... When I run my finger through your hair as you pray, I will simply be grateful that God has given me the greatest gift ever given. I will think about the mothers and fathers who are searching for their missing children, the mothers and fathers who are visiting their children’s graves instead of their bedrooms, and mothers and fathers who are in hospital rooms watching their children suffer senselessly, and screaming inside that they can’t handle it anymore. And when I kiss you good night I will hold you a little tighter, a little longer. It is then, that I will thank God for you, and ask him for nothing, except one more day.”

According to researcher John R. Ratliff, founder of www.BreakTheChain.org, a Web site that strives to reduce the amount of junk e-mail and misinformation floating around the Internet, this version of the e-mail hoax is actually an update to one started some time ago, likely in 2001. The first version was signed by a man, George Arlington, but included only a plea for help for his 10-year-old daughter. In 2002, Ratliff writes on his Web site, an anonymous e-mail forwarder attached an unrelated studio photo of a naked, sleeping infant with a blue bow and gift tag tied around it.

“It didn’t take long for some forwarders to notice the discrepancy between the age given in the text (10 years old), and the apparent age of the child in the attached photo (an infant),” said Ratliff.

Soon, the photo was dropped and replaced with a poem, possibly, said Ratliff, so the e-mail would somehow touch everyone who read it, including those who’s e-mail did not support images.

How Swim’s name was caught up in the e-mail hoax – or better yet, who added his name to the e-mail in place of the original name – is unclear. Farmer said Swim’s police department identification information isn’t hard to find by a member of the general public, especially since it’s clearly posted on his badge and on citations the officer issues.

Ratliff said these hoax e-mails – often referred to as “chain letters” – usually promise great change, monetary gain, or both, through simply sending the message on to other Internet users.

“For people not familiar with how the Internet worked, this was a welcoming concept,” said Ratliff. “The desire to help our fellow man – with very little energy and absolutely no cost – is indeed a powerful motivator that led many to believe it could be that easy. Hoaxes like this prey on our desire to help a child and the guilt we’d feel if it was really that easy and we didn’t do it.”

Chain letter e-mails, said Ratliff, cannot really be tracked as they often promise.

“Since the e-mail tracking hoax first originated (in the late 1990s), there have been many great strides in e-mail technology that allow some degree of tracking in very controlled environments and circumstances,” said Ratliff, “but tracking on the level suggested by the Rachel Arlington chain letter simply isn’t feasible or desirable.”

When its all said and done – the chain letter sent out to family members and friends – their e-mail addresses become targets for spammers, according to Ratliff.

“Many spammers and scam artists now employ or seek out chain letters like this one to build their mailing lists,” said Ratliff. “When you forward a chain like the Rachel Arlington hoax on to others, you’re putting your e-mail address and likely those of your friends and family out in the wild to be collected.”

Which, he says, explains the myriad of junk e-mail that floods Internet users’ inboxes.

“If you’ve been wondering why you get so much unwanted e-mail, the answer may be no further than your ‘Forward’ button,” said Ratliff. “The more junk you send, the more you will receive.”

The best advice, said Farmer, is for e-mailers to stop passing on the hoax to friends or family.

“Delete it, and don’t send it on,” said Farmer.

Contact Josh Newton at jnewton@tahlequahdailypress.com.



Learn more

For more information on hoax e-mails, or to see if an e-mail is a scam, visit one of the following Web sites:

• www.breakthechain.org

• www.snopes.com

Experts note not all e-mail hoaxes can be listed and detailed, so Internet users should be cautious when responding or acting on e-mail suggestions.