The news has spread across Utah through faxes and e-mail, on office bulletin boards and over neighborhood fences: To settle a lawsuit, Gerber baby food is giving $500 to every American child under 12 years of age.
It's an attractive offer in a state known for big families.But unfortunately for the parents out there, it's also a hoax.
Doug Barlow of Orem heard about the supposed offer from his father, who heard about it from a neighbor. Barlow has three children under age 12, but he was skeptical of the proposal from the start.
"It sounded like it was too good to be true, so I went and looked around on the Internet, and I found out this has been kicking around the whole country for about a year," Barlow said.
But the neighbor who received the fax about the offer already had distributed it at work, and it spread from there, Barlow said. "One person tells 10, and those 10 tell another 10."
The fax attributes its information to Reuters News Service and says Gerber lost a class-action lawsuit for marketing its baby food as "all natural," when in fact it contained preservatives. To settle that suit, the fax says, Gerber will give every child born between 1985 and 1997 a $500 savings bond.
The statement says anyone with a child under 12 should send a copy of the child's birth certificate and Social Security card to a post office box in Minneapolis.
But Fremont, Mich.-based Gerber Products Co. says it isn't handing out $500 savings bonds, and it has no intention to start.
Gerber has posted a notice on its World Wide Web site to let people know the rumored settlement is a hoax. The company has similarly notified state attorneys general and spread the word through newspaper articles.
But Gerber spokeswoman Terri Wahl said those efforts have not stopped the rumors - or the headaches for the company.
"We started getting lots of calls in January 1997," Wahl said Thurs-day. "We think it was some misinformation that we got connected with a 1996 baby formula settlement."
Gerber had nothing to do with that settlement, which dealt with formula pricing issues, she said. But the post office box listed as part of the Gerber hoax is the same one that was used for the formula case.
That box was the destination for more than 15,000 pieces of mail in one day last October. However, the formula settlement expired in January 1997, so the post office box is closed and any mail sent to it will be returned.
"Postal authorities in Minnesota are well aware of it," Wahl said. "We have no reason to believe (the information) is getting into the wrong hands."
Still, the Utah Better Business Bureau has prepared a recorded phone message explaining the Gerber hoax and warning people not to send out information about their children.
That's probably a good idea, because Wahl said the rumor shows no signs of dying.
"It's pretty much been all over the United States," she said. "We know it's resurfaced again after the first of the year, because phone calls are coming in again. . . . It is known as an urban legend al-ready."
Barlow said he has tried to spread the word about the hoax to his friends and family.