A £20,000 computer maintenance scam is active and causing financial misery in the Newton Abbot area, police warned this week.

Officers are anxious to alert as many people as possible – particularly the vulnerable and elderly – about the international tricksters who are thought to be operating out of India.

One woman in her 70s, who lives just outside Newton Abbot, was hoodwinked by the fraudsters earlier this month after they told her she needed to pay them a substantial sum to fix problems they had somehow identified with her computer.

She was promised new software – at a cost, and a heavy one.

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