Just some of the scam letters found at the house

A man in his 80s from Shropshire was bombarded with more than 3,000 scam letters in the 10 months leading up to his death after he was conned out of £10,000 of his savings.

Stunned executors of his estate found huge piles of mail in the home of the man which had been sent by dodgy companies and conmen from as far afield as Holland and America. The man lived alone in a village west of Shrewsbury.

He had neatly stacked the correspondence in his porch. Among the letters were Christmas cards from companies that were trying to swindle him.

John Burrowes, senior partner at PCB Solicitors in Shrewsbury, has now issued a warning to families of elderly and vulnerable people to keep closer checks on relatives who may be targeted.

The solicitor said staff had collected five further bin bags full of letters at the house. He said the elderly victim, who was educated and a former businessman, had been duped out of more than £10,000 after initially responding to a couple of the letters.

Efforts are now being made to reclaim as much of the money as possible.

Mr Burrowes said: “There were 3,000 letters at least which were sent to him in just 10 months. He didn’t open most of it, he stopped after a time.

“He answered one or two to start with and then the whole thing has just exponentially exploded. He sent money to someone and they had £10,000 out of his account.

“We knew nothing about it. I had seen him a number of times but I wasn’t aware of this problem. He was probably embarrassed about it and felt stupid.

“We have had the mail re-directed to us here and he’s still getting 10-15 letters a day. You’re looking at up to 100 a week.”

Mr Burrowes said it was important that people were aware of the amount of scam operations around which often target the weakest in society.

He said: “This was not an uneducated man, he was a former businessman and very shrewd but he still got caught. I have personally never seen anything like this before but I assume this must be repeated in a number of other households.

“I would urge anyone with elderly or vulnerable relatives to keep a check on them to ensure they do not fall victims to scams like this.”

By Russell Roberts