Pensioner, 90, conned out of £60,000 in decade-long postal scam

Seized: Sutton Council officer Trudy Richards with some of the thousands of scam letters intercepted
Sutton Council
Laura Proto22 April 2016

A pensioner was conned out of £60,000 after being targeted in a decade-long postal scam.

The 90-year-old victim, who lives in the borough of Sutton, first got caught up in the scam in 2005 when she ordered some make-up advertised in a mail order catalogue.

Shortly after placing the order, prize-draw letters began arriving to the woman’s home and the more letters she answered, the more she received.

Sutton Council said the pensioner responded to thousands of unsolicited letters and phone calls from the UK, France, The Netherlands, Canada and Australia over the years.

The elderly woman, who does not want to be named, said: “I thought I may as well go in for the prize draws. I was just buying things and filling in entry forms.

“I thought, I’m spending a lot of money here but I seem to be getting close to winning, I’m sure I’m winning, and that win will help replace the money that I’ve spent. It never did.

“It was like putting money in a slot machine and not getting a penny back.

“The more I responded, the more people wrote to me to say that I’d won a prize and ask me to send my details, then I would get another letter back saying that I needed to write off for an authorisation code.

“I got more and more and more of everything. I got a terrific lot of mail through the letterbox. I’ve gone through an awful lot of money. I must have spent £60,000.”

The scam came to light when Sutton Trading Standards identified a scam mail letter containing her bank details and a cheque. The team seized the letter along with other victims’ bank details.

Council officer Trudy Richards visited the woman in her home and found a large store cupboard piled high with bags of scam mail.

The pensioner’s bedroom was also full of thousands of items she had ordered to be able to enter prize draws.

The victim added: “When you look back you can’t believe you could be so stupid.

“The penny dropped when I was shown the cheque by Trading Standards and told that they had intercepted a known scam. It hit me then that I had spent all of that money and I had got nothing that I would ordinarily buy.”

A total of 34 bags of scam mail were removed from the pensioner’s home and Sutton council set up a mail redirection service to prevent any further scam mail from arriving at the woman’s home.

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