A Puyallup building supply business, Trident Waterworks, had its identity stolen along with its bank information.

The company has customers all over the country, so phone calls from far away are nothing new. But dozens of recent calls from California, Arizona, Texas, South Carolina, Pennsylvania and nearly every one of the 50 U.S. states certainly raised an alarm.

It all started a few weeks ago, when office manager Caroline Sullivan received a call from her company's bank.

A woman in California had just called the bank to see whether Trident Waterworks and its bank account were legitimate, because she had just received a check from Trident.

"Yes, the account was legitimate, but the check was definitely a fraud," said Sullivan.

That call was the first of dozens alerting Sullivan that Trident Waterworks had become the victim of identity theft.

"I finally quit keeping my log of them when it hit about 75," said Sullivan.

Apparently, someone had stolen one of the company's checks and was using it in what's commonly called the check overpayment scam.

"Don't be tempted by these checks. These scams are probably the thing I deal with the most at the Attorney General's Office. They're huge, they're everywhere, and they're not showing any signs of slowing down. It's a fat lie," said Kristin Alexander of the state Attorney General's Office.

Fraudulent copies of Trident's checks were being mailed along with a letter, informing people they'd won a Canadian lottery. The recipients were told to cash the nearly $4,000 forgeries, and wire $2,900 of it to a "claims agent" to cover "taxes." Once that was done, the recipient would then get $55,000.

"We had to close that account immediately," said Sullivan.

Trident Waterworks didn't lose any money. But Sullivan did spend many hours on the phone fielding calls from very angry people who thought they'd won a contest they'd never even entered. And that they'd be getting money from a business in Washington state, because it said so right there on the check!

"One lady just last week that called me up was so angry at me because we had sent this check out that was no good. And I said, 'Lady, we have been a victim of identity theft.' (She said) 'Well, your name is on the check. Your bank is on the check.' I just couldn't make her understand," said Sullivan.

KIRO 7 Consumer Investigators tried to understand how the letter-writers got a hold of Trident Waterwork's check. So we called the three different phone numbers listed in the letters. All numbers were disconnected.

It's impossible to know how many checks were mailed. But Sullivan says her bank sent her at least 100 that had all been cashed.

If those 100 people all sent $2,900 to cover the so-called "taxes", that's a profit of nearly $300,000 for the scam artists.

People fall for them. Not everybody, but enough that it makes it extraordinarily profitable. And we have to educate each other and defend ourselves," said Assistant Attorney General Doug Walsh.

In addition to Trident Waterworks, the other victims here are the people who cashed those checks and sent the money for "taxes," because every dollar will come out of their own accounts once their own banks realize these checks are frauds.

You should also know that a foreign lottery cannot be legally played in the United States anyway.