CENSUS BUREAU FINDS CON ARTISTS SURFACE AMID TALLY OF THE NATI ON.(Main)

Byline: Carolyn Skorneck Associated Press

An 80-year-old North Carolina woman was tied up and robbed by two men she thought were census workers. Con artists claiming to be census employees charged Houston residents $50 after helping them complete their forms.

"Any time you have something this big, the scam artists are going to come out of the woodwork," said Larry Bryant of the U.S. Census Bureau's regional office in Los Angeles.

There are 200,000 to 230,000 official census enumerators combing the countryside, knocking on doors of those people who failed to complete the form sent this spring, said agency spokesman Mark Mangold.

Isolated incidents of con …