Dave Thompson MSP

Highland trading standards officers have been called in to investigate after an unlucky team of would-be fraudsters picked on  the wrong household for their latest scam.

Fortunately Veronica Thompson from the Kinmylies area of Inverness immediately smelt a rat when she opened a letter sent to inform her of her "luck" in being awarded almost three and a half million pounds.

All she had to do to accept this money, the letter told her, was to send a "Document Release Fee" of £20 to a PO Box in New York.

Coincidentally Mrs Thompson's husband Dave, SNP MSP for the Highlands and Islands, was last month elected as vice-president of the Trading Standards Institute of the UK when that body met in Inverness and he knew the importance of alerting the authorities to the presence of a new scam circulating in the area.

Mr Thompson, a former director of Trading Standards at Highland Council, said: "These scams seem to get ever more widespread. Luckily it was spotted and I was able to confirm it was not genuine because of my experience in dealing with this sort of thing in the past.

"They also ask you to send a cheque for £20 and from that they could try to get your pin number and use that to take thousands from your account."

Mr Thompson's concern was that this information could then be sold on to another group which specialises in telephoning people at home and uses this to convince them the call is from their bank.

"Then you get someone phoning you up who knows your name, address, sort code and account number and wants you to reveal your password to prove your identity," Mr Thompson said. "No bank would ever ask you to reveal this over the phone so you must not do this."

The politician then passed the letter on to his former colleagues at Highland Council's Trading Standards department for investigation.

Bob Jones, a trading standards officer there, revealed that he and his colleagues greeted the news with a wry irony. "This was perhaps not the best address for them to send their letter to.

"They wouldn't get any money out of Veronica, not with Dave's experience on her side."

Note:

Mr Thompson was formerly a Highland Council director, chairman of the Scottish Society of Directors of Trading Standards and an Advisor to both the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA) and the UK Local Authorities Co-ordinating Body on Food and Trading Standards (LACOTS).