A 90-year-old woman has handed more than £60,000 to fraudsters after falling for thousands of scam letters and calls over the course of a decade.

The Sutton pensioner was bombarded with enough unsolicited mail, sent from across the globe, to fill 34 rubbish sacks.

Sutton Council’s trading standards team were forced to set up a mail redirection service with the Post Office to prevent further scam letters arriving and change her phone number to fend off calls from con artists.

The woman came to the attention of council officers when they seized mail containing her bank details and a cheque written by her along with other victims' details.

The trading standards team learned she had fallen prey to thousands of unsolicited letters and calls from the UK, France, the Netherlands, Canada and Australia.

The woman was first snared by a postal scam in 2005 when she ordered some make-up advertised in a mail-order catalogue.

Soon after a prize-draw letter arrived through her door, trapping the the victim in a "cycle" of cons.

She received more letters for each that she responded to.

The pensioner, who did not want to be named, said: "I got caught up in the cycle. It just goes on and on. You think, 'I have won, it says I’ve won,' but you never get the money. 

“You find a clause at the bottom if you read the letter carefully, which you don’t do, that says if you have won in tiny letters that you can’t see unless you’re really looking for them. But you don’t look for them, do you?

“You get caught up in it and you can’t get yourself out.

“The more I responded, the more people wrote to me to say that I’d won a prize and ask me to send my details, then I would get another letter back saying that I needed to write off for an authorisation code.

“I got more and more and more of everything. I got a terrific lot of mail through the letterbox. I’ve gone through an awful lot of money. I must have spent £60,000.

She added: "It was like putting money in a slot machine and not getting a penny back."

Trudy Richards, environmental protection officer in Sutton's trading standards team, said: "The pensioner said she was relieved it was all out in the open. 

"She mentioned she had fallen behind with her rent a couple of years ago and was entering prize draws believing she was a winner and would then be able to pay her rent and top-up her dwindling savings.

“She had been responding to prize draws and mail from all over the world ordering unwanted and overpriced items for over a decade. She said she did not want or need a fraction of the items she had ordered and the more she responded the more she received."

Scams based on prize draws, clairvoyants, investment, land ownership, holiday clubs, wills and dating are all regularly targeted at Sutton households, according to the council.

In some cases people have been sent competition letters offering top prizes in return for them completing an acceptance form with their name, address, telephone number and date of birth. 

Some victims have ordered expensive and unwanted goods just to be entered into prize draw.

Anyone who has been the target of a scam can contact the Citizens Advice consumer helpline on 03454 04 05 06, call Action Fraud 0300 123 2040 or visit www.actionfraud.police.uk