Sir,

May I, through your newspaper, bring to the attention of your readers a phone call which I received this week.

It was from a man calling himself Nick Alder from UK Nation al Bank Reclaim Dept. He said I was owed £4,381 by a bank for various charges which they had taken from me over recent years, and that he was organising the repayment to me on behalf of the government.

I replied that I was not aware of any charges, having never been overdrawn etc. and that he must have made a mistake. To which his reply was that I was one of 75,000 people on his list and that he could arrange for the total amount to be sent to my local Post Office at a time to suit me.

All I had to do was state a time and when inside the Post Office I was to use my mobile phone to contact his manager, a Mr. Paul Moore, and a form would need to be filled in then and moneygram used to transfer the money. I in turn would be required to moneygram a verification fee of £386 to them which would then be refunded to me.

By now, I was completely sure that this was a con, so I asked him why this £386 could not be taken off the £4,381 beforehand, to which he replied that the government had set out clear guidelines which they had to follow.

Although from the start of the conversation, I had no intention of doing what this man suggested, I must say he was very convincing and persistent.

After ending the phone call, I rang Dyfed Powys Police and reported most of the conversation (I had been making notes), along with the telephone number that he gave. Within half-an-hour the Police rang me back to say that the telephone number was indeed bogus and listed as a con number, and that these people were intent on getting the public to part with £386 by moneygram, and then being unable to be contacted again meaning no refund.

The Police suggested contacting my local newspaper with a view to letting people know about this scam.

Name and address supplied