Officials from the Office of International Students and Scholars are warning of a phone scam that collects processing fees for a fake grant.

According to an e-mail sent by the office, an MSU international student received a phone call last week from a person who claimed to be from a federal government grant agency and said he or she had an $8,000 grant. The student was told to give his checking account number and pay a $257 processing fee.

The Office of International Students and Scholars, or OISS, sent out the e-mail Monday to international students to warn such a grant doesn't exist.

"We had an international student asking about what's going on," OISS Director Peter Briggs said. "We wanted to put words out to students to put them on guard."

Another student reported the scam to OISS right after the e-mail was sent out, Briggs said, adding OISS officials were not yet aware of any cases where students had actually paid the money.

"But that doesn't mean it hasn't happened," he said. "International students are new to the country, vulnerable and don't know much about the country. There's a certain amount of vulnerability in students who came from other countries."

A phone scam is a type of electronic con that has become increasingly common during the past few years. E-mail scams are also becoming more common.

Typical e-mail scams involve messages from people who claim to have a large amount of illegitimate money and they need a bank account number to transfer the money to, said MSU senior information technologist Richard Wiggins.

"They make you confident that it's legitimate," he said.

It's getting harder to tell scam e-mails apart because they are getting more sophisticated, Wiggins said.

"They are sending out many millions of these," he said. "Even if only few of them respond, they can clear their bank accounts. A small percentage of the big number can make you lots of money."

Computer experts say it's hard to protect people from the scam e-mails, even though many systems can filter spam mail.

"Computers can't get any smarter than any normal business person," said Scott Thomas, division manager for computing services at the MSU computer center.

People should contact the Federal Trade Commission for electronic scam cases, MSU police Sgt. Florene McGlothian-Taylor said.