PATRICIA Lewington didn't quite know what to expect when she opened a letter from the Serious Organised Crimes Agency.
The 63-year-old, of Brookhill Road, Kexborough, told the Chronicle she was completely dumbfounded to discover inside a cheque she had written nearly a year ago which had been sent back to her by the agency.
In the letter to Patricia, Trevor Pearce, SOCA's director of enforcement, told her she had been a victim of mass marketing fraud along with 22,000 other people in the country.
She said: "I got a letter from this group called Patron Prize Information service last year asking me to send a release fee of £10 to win thousands of pounds back.
"In hindsight it seemed too good to be true but I sent them a cheque for £10 anyway believing in good faith it wasn't a scam. I never heard anything from them so when I got the letter from SOCA I was a bit surprised."
