£20,000 taken from account by con pair in Oswestry
A woman has had £20,000 taken from her account after her bank card was stolen by distraction thieves she let into her home after a shopping trip.
A man and a woman with foreign accents had watched her take money from a machine in the centre of Oswestry and then followed her back to her home where they pretended to ask for directions.
She let the pair, both in their late 20s, in to her kitchen and they took her cash card, replacing it with one they had stolen elsewhere.
Police said there had been a number of similar offences reported in Shrewsbury, Market Drayton and Broseley, and urged people to be vigilant.
The woman, from Salop Street, Oswestry, had been into the town centre on October 5 and had withdrawn some cash from a machine in Church Street.
As she walked up her drive she was approached by a woman holding a map and asking, in a foreign accent, for directions.
The woman was joined by a man and the resident was asked to mark out a location on the map. She was asked to do this inside the house, on the kitchen table, out of the rain.
A West Mercia Police spokeswoman said: "The victim, who is an older resident, believed that nothing had been taken.
"However, on Friday, October 9, she discovered that her own bank card had been taken and, to conceal the theft, had been replaced by a card which had been stolen elsewhere.
"The offenders obtained the PIN for the card by observing the victim at the cash point.
"The bank confirmed that over £20,000 had been withdrawn from the victim's accounts by fraudulent transactions at various locations around the UK."
Similar distraction thefts of bank cards using the map and requests for written directions in poor English have been reported recently in Shrewsbury, Market Drayton, and Broseley.
She warned shoppers to be vigilant when withdrawing money at cash points or paying for purchases in busy shops and supermarkets, and to keep PIN numbers secure at all times.
Anyone with information about the incident in Oswestry is asked to contact police on 101 quoting reference 0268s of October 5 regarding the card theft and 0191s of October 9 regarding the withdrawal of money from the account.
