Iowa State officials helped put an end to a misleading solicitation sent to incoming freshmen across the nation.

The National College Registration Board (NCRB) a New Jersey company, sent around 1.8 million solicitations in April for a “Campus Card” to high school seniors and their parents across the United States.

The mailing said the card was required of incoming freshmen as identification and also claimed that the card gave college students purchasing privileges, said Bob Brammer, spokesman for the office of Attorney General Tom Miller.

“We got word of it early on from some parents and high school counselors,” said Steve Sullivan, manager of ISU News Service.

Joan Thompson, ISU treasurer, said she received a call from the University Book Store in the Memorial Union about the card. She said the bookstore had received a call from a high school counselor who received the letter and thought it might be a scam.

ISU officials looked into it and called the university attorney, who then contacted Miller. It was one of the first calls the attorney general’s office received with concerns about the mailings.

Miller announced last week that the NCRB would be issuing refunds to all those who sent money, and that the company also has ceased operations.

“It was a joint effort by a lot of people that closed this down,” Thompson said.

Brammer said the 36 Iowans who sent money for the card will receive refunds. Of those, 23 will get cash refunds and 13 will have their uncashed checks returned. The card cost $25.

“The thing that troubled us about it was that it said these cards were required at colleges and universities all over the country,” Brammer said. “It was a completely optional solicitation.”

Brammer said his family received one of the solicitations, and that the mailing looked very official. The company was based in Princeton, N.J., the same location as the SAT testing organization.

Miller’s office also was alerted to the misleading solicitations by University of Northern Iowa officials.

“We think we noticed the very first mailings that arrived in Iowa,” Brammer said. About a day later, the office investigated the solicitations enough to stop the scam from going any further, he said.

“It was something we recognized right away as misleading,” he said.

The Attorney General’s office immediately faxed a letter to the company ordering them to stop sending the mailings into Iowa and to issue refunds to those Iowans who sent money. Miller also issued a warning to Iowans about the mailings through news releases.

“We made it clear that [the cards] were not required of students or connected to the universities,” Brammer said.

He said Iowa was the first state to issue such an order and the first to warn people. He added that 35 other states followed Iowa’s lead. He said the results of the actions will pertain to all states.

“Any victim anywhere is going to be able to get their money back,” Brammer said.

He said NCRB is out of business and will have to make complete refunds. If the founders of the company have any further activity in this area, an automatic $30,000 penalty will be posed upon them. He said the people behind it were fairly recent college graduates.

“It wasn’t the hard-core fraud we often see,” Brammer said. “There will be a very severe penalty if they dabble in this again.”

That doesn’t mean they are not feeling the punishment the first time around.

“They’re definitely bankrupt,” Brammer said. “They’re out of many thousands of dollars.”

Brammer said victims of the scam should receive their refunds in a couple of weeks.