DAWSON CITY - Among the many problems with false telephone solicitations and Internet e-mail phishing scams is that "real" sometimes get mistaken for the "fakes".

That was the case with John Barratt of Beloit, Ohio, when he got a 12 a.m. call from Dawson City telling him he had won a five-ounce gold bar in the Yukon Order of Pioneers' (YOOPs') annual Gold Poke raffle.

YOOP president Wayne Rachel says he had a bit of a struggle to convince the man that it wasn't a hoax.

Barratt and his wife, Michelle, were in Dawson last summer. They spent about a week in the town, including some evenings at Diamond Tooth Gerties.

They toured in the Yukon and Alaska for about two months and were in Dawson around the time of the Dawson City Music Festival.

He told Rachel they had a super time here and hoped to come back, but even if they don't, they certainly plan to buy another raffle ticket next year.

The two-ounce winner was Cindy Sakki, a Dawson woman who works at the Eldorado Hotel.

The winning tickets were drawn from the YOOP's brand-new raffle drum, which they bought to replace the battered metal mesh drum that had to be banged back into shape before each raffle draw.

Rachel said the drum, custom-made by Plasticworks, a firm with branches in Surrey and Abbotsford, B.C., is available for use by any community organization that needs it.

The Gold Poke draw sells 8,000 tickets, so the YOOP had this one made to hold more than that.