It was early on a Monday morning and we were having coffee in the kitchen. Without warning the front door opened and someone stepped inside and began to yell, “Hello, hello. Who’s here?” It took me a minute to respond and by that time he was in the kitchen.

“Can I help you,” I said.

He wanted to know if he was at house number 200 on our street.

“No,” I said. “Sorry, it’s not. We’re 201, not 200.”

Well then, where was house number 200, he wanted to know. But when I told him there was no 200, that we were the first house on the two hundred block and the previous block was the one hundred block, he questioned me again, challenged me, told me I was wrong and there must be a 200 because that was the address of the charity group he was looking for and that was where he had sent his money.

“Isn’t that where I am,” he asked again. “Aren’t you Charity XYZ?”

“No, I don’t know that charity. I’ve never heard of it and I know there’s no number 200 on this street. Besides this is a residential area and there are no offices here, so you have the wrong address.”

Now my visitor was angry, beet red in the face angry, and I was getting a little worried. Tried moving him toward the door but he was shouting something about $1,000, having given this group $1,000 and he was here to pick up something. A receipt? A thank you? I can’t recall, but I gathered that he was out $1,000 and not too happy about it. Eventually he left and I found myself thinking, “How could he possibly have fallen for some bogus charity fundraising scheme without knowing the group he was sending his money to?”

In past I’ve had several credit cards stolen (but always got a refund from Master Card or American Express) and my husband once got caught by a “free airline ticket” time-share come-on. My elderly dad got sucked into a “free cruise” to the Bahamas that ended up being pretty expensive after all the hidden costs and “upgrade” expenses, and I knew about a lot of computer and on-line deceptions and frauds, but come on, sending your money to someone blindly?

I enjoyed that feeling of superiority for about two weeks before a major criminal fraud hit my own home. We had found a summer beach house on the Internet. We called the realtor with the listing. They gave us all the information and said we had to pay the advance deposit directly to the homeowner. Gave us his e-mail and phone number. We sent an e-mail to the homeowner and asked how we should pay. Got a return e-mail saying the money should be wired to a particular bank account number. We called back to confirm and he acknowledged he had sent us an e-mail with the wiring instructions. So, next day we went to the bank and sent $2,400. Task complete. House rented.

Except the homeowner didn’t get the money. Someone in London did. Someone who intercepted his e-mail and replied to us with their directions and bank account number. So the homeowner didn’t get paid and we are out $2,400. And will have to pay him again if we want to rent the house. The bank says it’s not their problem because we gave them the wiring info and they did exactly what we asked them to do. The realtors said it’s not their problem because they gave us all the right info about the house and the homeowner. The homeowner now knows we’re not the first — others have been scammed through the same e-mail interception — so his account is now shut down and he has referred it to the Provincetown Police. The police say they are looking into it and can’t promise anything.

And we feel like idiots.

I brought it up at my book club the other night and of course the remarks from casual observers sounded ominously like my own: Come on, how could you send money to someone without confirming the account number? Basically, “Are you an idiot?”

Maybe, and that’s scary. Even more scary is that now I know this kind of fraud really happens and it’s not just talk and it doesn’t just happen to stupid or careless people. It’s going to take me a while to trust Internet transactions again. Maybe I’ll just resort to that old tried and true method, the checks in the mail.

Has anyone else had such incidents?

 * Lee Miller welcomes responses. Please email them to leemiller229@gmail.com