The mailings seem innocent enough. Send us...

The mailings seem innocent enough. Send us your check, they say, and we’ll send you anything from weight-loss pills to diamond rings, from cameras to condo shares.

But the product that arrives, if one arrives at all, often is of lesser quality than what was advertised. And the people bilked tend to be senior citizens, many of whom are coaxed out of their money by the slick brochures they receive at a rate of two or three a week.

Small-ticket consumer mail fraud amounts to $20 million annually, according to Steve Schneringer of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, who conducted an information fair at a Los Angeles senior center Monday. The figure does not include an additional $30 million lost to investment fraud through the mails, such as boiler-room oil and gas lease schemes, Schneringer said.

He said the Postal Inspection Service does not know how many seniors are victims of fraud, but he said elderly people tend to be more susceptible to flimflam than younger people.

“People over 65 control a large share of the savings in the United States. Do you know how important you are to a con man?” Schneringer asked about 50 seniors at the Delta Sigma Theta Center for Life Development on West Boulevard in South-Central Los Angeles.

‘Tend to Be More Trusting’

“Older people were raised in an era when they didn’t have to lock the front door,” Schneringer said. “They tend to be more trusting. Also, because they’ve lived a long time, they are on a lot more mailing lists.”

But Schneringer cautioned that “everyone out there is a potential victim” of consumer mail fraud.

He displayed a series of products ranging from “Diet Vision” glasses that supposely make food look less appealing, to a tiny so-called “professional” tool kit, to plastic luggage tags worth a lot closer to 59 cents than the $5 claimed.

“How did they get my name and address over in Europe?” called out Peter Mereska, 71. “I get mail saying, ‘Buy lottery tickets in Germany, in Australia. . . . I’ve never even been there!” Mereska recently spent about $12 for what he thought would be a desk-size electronic piano. He got an electronic piano, all right, but it fits in the palm of his hand.

Rosemary Stringer, 69, said a sweepstakes company once put her name on a brochure, advertising her as a $5-million winner. Stringer, who has been ill and unable to work for 15 years, said her disability payments stopped until she could prove that she had not received the mail-order prize.

“I don’t have no money,” Stringer said. “I don’t have nothing. I never entered any sweepstakes.”

Postal inspector Schneringer said the best advice he could give is to exercise caution in responding to mail-order appeals.

“The old adage applies,” he said. “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” He urged seniors to seek advice from each other and from relatives, and to call the U.S. Postal Service Inspection Service hot line if they doubt the integrity of an advertiser.

He said hot-line operators know which companies have been accused of fraud and how to identify potential fraud.

The Postal Inspection Service is an independent investigative wing of the U.S. Postal Service, and has helped bring civil and criminal suits against people who abuse the mails. Schneringer said consumer information booths will be open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at four post offices this week: Bicentennial Station, 7610 Beverly Blvd., today ; Watts Station, 10301 S. Compton Ave., Wednesday; Oakwood Station, 265 S. Western Ave., Thursday, and at Rimpau Station, 4040 W. Washington Blvd. on Friday.