When e-mail users receive a questionable message promising a lottery win or zero-percent financing, many immediately toss them aside, well aware they are a hoax.

But e-mail scams are becoming more and more sophisticated, a number of them aimed at touching someone’s heart and encouraging them to make a difference – to help someone in desperate need.

One such e-mail made its way into the heart of Tahlequah, causing local people, even people from around the U.S., to e-mail the Tahlequah Police Department and the Daily Press to ask, “Is this really true?”

The subject line of the e-mail, forwarded to a Daily Press employee, reads, “To My Daughter - by a Oklahoma Police Officer.”

Not only is the officer from Oklahoma, the e-mail promises, but from a Tahlequah school resource officer – Bryan Swim. The body of the e-mail claims the author – “Swim” – is a 29-year-old father, and that he has a daughter named Rachel recently diagnosed with brain cancer.

The e-mail continues, “Not long ago the doctors detected brain cancer in her little body. There is only one way to save her and that is an operation. Sadly we don’t have the money for the operation.”

According to the e-mail, AOL and ZDnet.com track each time the message is sent to someone else, and for everyone who opens the e-mail and sends it (known as “forwarding”) to at least three others, Swim and his family receive 32 cents.

“In my computers class, several students are getting and forwarding an e-mail allegedly from a Bryan Swim of the Tahlequah Police Department,” Tracy Engholm, a Crow Middle School/High School teacher, of Oregon, wrote to the Press. “The kids think that they are helping by forwarding this e-mail. What I want to know is: Is it real? I would like to know so that I can tell the kids one way or the other. Fraud is a big deal on the Internet. My students are middle-school students and are not as circumspect as they should be. I would like to use this as a lesson.”

Swim cleared up the confusion Friday afternoon after being interviewed by a member of Tulsa’s KTUL-TV station. He’s not the 29-year-old father of a 10-year-old girl – though he is a parent of a younger, healthy daughter – and he didn’t send the e-mail; he’s not sure who did or why.

“It’s definitely a hoax,” said Swim. “It started two to three years ago, and I didn’t even have a child at the time.”

Tahlequah Police Chief Steve Farmer said three years worth of investigation into the source of the hoax hasn’t turned up answers.

“I average six e-mails a day [questioning this hoax e-mail],” said Farmer. “A lot of those are saying, ‘We want to take up a donation,’ or, ‘Here’s where he can go to get help.’ We get phone calls daily. Dispatch averages two to three calls a day.”

Swim’s name appears “signed” at the bottom, along with, “Tahlequah, OK Police Dept., School Resource Officer, # 65.”

A spokeswoman from ZDnet.com, one of the Internet sites named inside the e-mail as one of the monetary supporters, said it’s simply false information.

“That e-mail has been around for a long time; it’s definitely a hoax,” the spokeswoman for CNET Networks (ZDnet.com) said.