A new lottery prize scam using Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) logos has prompted a warning to the public to beware.

Committee officials say fraud artists have started using VANOC letterhead to persuade people to give them personal banking information.

They cite the case of Charles Anderson of Denver, Colo., who recently received a letter, purportedly from VANOC, telling him he had won a $50,000 prize. In order to collect, he had to send in his bank details.

Anderson became suspicious and alerted VANOC officials because the logos on the envelope were fuzzy and there was a Toronto return address.

Bill Cooper, the director of commercial rights management for the 2010 Winter Games, said he's not surprised, noting that Olympic officials in other cities have already been dealing with this type of scam.

He said he expects that as the Olympics get closer, more and more fraud artists will be trying to get in on the game.

"We anticipate more of it to be happening. We don't know what scale it will be happening on, but if you take London as an example, we're probably a little less of a target. But if we take their numbers and activity as a guide, then we know that this will be happening on a relatively frequent basis around the Vancouver 2010 games"
 
Cooper said VANOC is updating its website to alert the public about this and other scams.