The U.S. Attorney General's Office is seeking to seize property from a Bandon woman who authorities believe is connected to a mail fraud scheme that swindled about $255,000 from people across the nation over the last four years.

According to a federal affidavit filed in July by Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Nesler, the government wants to seize the woman's property, located in the 48000 block of U.S. Highway 101, in Bandon, because it is believed to have been purchased with proceeds from the mail fraud scheme - a violation of federal law.

To date, no criminal fraud charges have been filed against the woman, but a federal investigation is ongoing as well as the government's civil forfeiture case to seize the property. Nesler said the forfeiture case could take about a year and likely would be prosecuted in conjunction with a criminal case.

A fraud conviction could land the woman in prison for 20 years.

According to federal documents, U.S. Postal Service Special Agent Camille Hammonds said the woman went by a series of aliases including Patricia Parker, Heather Richner, Wendy Jones, Carla J. Norway and Carla J. Miller. She operated a “series of fraudulent cash-generating schemes” from eight post office boxes in Oregon and Idaho, including those in Coos Bay, Coquille, Myrtle Point, Sixes, Sweet Home, Langlois, Lebanon and Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.

Hammonds said the woman used false names and addresses to open the post office boxes and to solicit materials nationwide to induce people to mail back cash. The flyers the woman mailed out included promises of participants receiving 100 times the amount of money contributed. The mailings claimed participants could triple their money every 30 days. One flyer obtained by authorities declared participants who invested $120 could receive more than $2 million within nine months.

However, no significant amounts of cash was ever returned.

The list of known victims is long.

A 75-year-old disabled veteran named Austen Autwell, from Woodstock, Ala., mailed in $1,870, hoping to more than double his money.

Instead, he got nothing.

Alice Cook, of Kirksville, Mo., mailed in $1,050 and expected to win big.

She now has nothing to show for it.

A 77-year-old La Crosse, Wis., man sent in $1,500 hoping the so-called “matrix level plan” would one day yield big time payouts. Aside from a $100 payout - which he contends only was meant to draw him farther in - he received nothing.

“It would have been good to profit a little bit from it - but obviously it was a scam,” said Harold Lubeck, who works as a maintenance man in a La Crosse apartment complex.

“Any time you receive a solicitation that sounds to good to be true it's a smart idea to run it past friends and family and get a second opinion,” Hammonds said.

She added if people think they are defrauded, they should file a complaint with the postal inspection service.

U.S. postal inspectors were informed of the South Coast mail fraud scheme in July 2002. Unbeknownst to investigators at the time, the scheme had been in operation since September of 2001.

It would last another four years.

In 2002, postal inspectors tried to locate the woman at an address provided on a P.O. Box registration form, but were unable to do so because the address belonged to a Coquille woman who had died weeks before.

Postmasters eventually shut down the box.

But in the ensuing years, the scam sprang up again in Coquille, Myrtle Point, Sixes and Lebanon. In each case, postmasters were drawn to irregularities, including 20 or more pieces of first class mail arriving daily. They informed the woman, who used different names in each case, they planned to withhold her mail. Sometimes she responded, asking the post office to return the mail to its sender, while other times she simply stopped making payments and the box was shut down.

In one instance, the Myrtle Point postmaster returned 1,228 pieces of mail.

As the scheme continued, postal inspectors investigatory techniques intensified, zeroing in on the woman's patterns. Last November, investigators took photos of her removing mail from a post office box in Coos Bay, also noting the make, model and license plate of the vehicle she drove. The photo was compared to the one on her driver's license.

“I believe it is the same person,” Hammonds wrote in the affidavit.

Investigators also are relying on handwriting analysis as a means to link the various aliases and fictitious Oregon companies to the woman. In June, agent Hammonds executed a search warrant on the Bandon property and noted evidence including plastic tubs filled with mailed envelopes and participation forms from victims. In addition, a ringed notebook showed the name, date and amount of cash received from each victim.

A 73-year-old Baptist preacher, the Rev. Jacob Frederick of Gays, Ill., lost $1,400 on the scheme. In the last three days, he said he's received three similar flyers in the mail from what he suspects are other fraudulent companies.

But he isn't biting anymore.

“It sounds good - but it's nothing,” Frederick said. “It's all hot air. I've lost a lot more than I ever made.”