Today, there will be a mountain of post waiting for Yvonne Richards.
There will be the odd bank statement or bill and six or seven pieces of junk mail. One letter will claim she’s won £25,000 in a lottery. Another will say she’s come first in a prize draw.
Both will tell her that to claim her winnings she just needs to pay a small administration fee or buy something from a catalogue.
Mountain of mail: Yvonne Richards with some of the scam letters she’s been sent
How does Yvonne know this is what she’s going to get in the post today?
Because ever since she bought a £20 blender advertised in a magazine, she’s been bombarded with junk mail after her name was put on a so-called suckers list.
This is a database of names, addresses and phone numbers of vulnerable people who fraudsters believe are likely to fall for scams.
Those on these lists are hounded every day with scam letters trying to convince them to hand over their savings to claim fictitious prizes.
Yvonne says she receives around 40 letters a week.
It’s become a daily nightmare for the 91-year-old widow since she lost her husband Ron in 2008. And she’s lost £35,000 in savings as a result.
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Yvonne, who lives alone in a retirement flat in Hampshire, says: ‘The letters just never stop coming. Sometimes it takes a full day to go through all the post.
‘And these companies put such pressure on you to reply. Each one says I “must do this” and I have to “act now” to claim the money.’
Every week, Money Mail hears from dozens of readers just like Yvonne who have been sent letters claiming they have won a lottery, prize draw or are due a forgotten inheritance.
Many suspect the letters are scams, but are worried that if they don’t check, they might be missing out on something big.
But if you reply you’ll be added to a suckers list, too.
Experts at Bournemouth University say more than a million people are on these lists. Many are elderly, live alone or have suffered a bereavement.
Professor Keith Brown, who specialises in mental capacity at Bournemouth University, PhenQ Reviews says: ‘These people’s personal data is traded and sold to the highest bidder, then these companies trawl through it to find isolated, older people.
Duped: Yvonne, and her husband Ron on their wedding day in 1956.
‘They look out for those who live in sheltered housing and those who have been widowed.
‘This is a generation that believes people, they see the truth in others. It’s such a tragedy that we have to tell them not to.’
Often victims are too embarrassed to come forward and hide their secret life away from family and friends.
Professor Brown says his mother lost £2,500 in just eight days after being targeted by a vitamin pill scam.
He uncovered 16 dustbin bags full of useless supplements littered around her house. She had been too embarrassed to tell him.
Yvonne has bravely agreed to speak out and tell her story in a bid to help stop other vulnerable people falling victim.
Yvonne, who worked for decades as a civil servant, had always thrown any junk mail sent to the house straight into the recycling bin without even opening it.
After Ron became ill and had to move into a care home, Yvonne moved into a retirement flat to be closer to him. She’d drive to see him every day and take him out for a picnic.
But after Ron’s death, her health began to fail, too. She started to lose her sight and was rarely able to leave the house.
The only people she had to talk to were her carers. Yvonne and Ron didn’t have children and she has outlived all her younger siblings.
Lonely and with nothing to occupy her days alone in the flat, she began replying to all the scam letters she was sent. ‘Going through the post gave me a purpose,’ says Yvonne.
‘I have no one left, so it became my routine. A part of me knew it was wrong. I’m not a stupid person, but it occupied me, I’m a do-er.
‘I just kept on sending them money for things I didn’t need. Then I just gave away all the products as gifts. I ended up in arrears. I had never been in the red in my life, Ron would be horrified. This would never have happened if he was still alive.’
By the time investigators at East Sussex Trading Standards visited Yvonne at home, she’d spent £35,000 and her house was full of useless products.
The team had suspected she’d fallen prey to scammers after discovering her name on a suckers list uncovered by investigators.
In the past three months alone, the National Trading Standards Scams Team has intercepted 749,500 pieces of scam mail across the country, such as fake prize draws and clairvoyant scams.
Now Yvonne collects her letters every week and gives them straight to Trading Standards to use as evidence.
a.rouse@dailymail.co.uk
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