Tom Lowdon made payments totalling £85,000 over 14 months after being told that he was due to receive a multimillion-pound windfall from investments made by a distant relative in a South African mining company.

By the time that he realised that he had been the target of an elaborate confidence trick, he had sold everything he owned to raise money for fees supposed to facilitate the transfer of his bogus inheritance. He dreamt of owning a luxury home and travelling the world; instead, he was left penniless.

The 50-year-old sales adviser, from Doncaster, South Yorkshire, who insisted yesterday that he had not been gullible, raised £22,000 from the sale of his semi- detached house and £14,000 by selling his Citroën car.

He also borrowed money from friends and relatives. His parents remortgaged their home to raise £25,000.

In total, Mr Lowdon made 40 payments of sums between £500 and £11,000 to an “agent” in Amsterdam, who said that they were needed for administration costs, legal fees, banking charges and money transfers. He spoke by telephone to the agent, who called himself Joseph Ibuzor, on an almost daily basis and still refuses to accept that this man could have masterminded the entire operation.

South Yorkshire Police, who have launched a fraud investigation, said that Mr Lowdon had been the victim of a variation on the infamous 419 scam, a swindle named after a section of the Nigerian penal code. In the United States, the FBI has estimated that such scams make £55 million a year. Its practitioners typically target people at random by e-mail to promise large sums of money for assistance in arranging the transfer of multimillion-pound fortunes from African countries.

Mr Lowdon’s first contact came in March 2003, when he received a letter posted in South Africa, purporting to come from a bona fide investment company, which informed him that a man with his surname had died, leaving a £4,168,000 fortune. The company said that it was trying to trace the dead man’s next of kin and suggested that a claim could be made on his behalf if he sent details of his birth certificate and passport.

Mr Lowdon checked with his family, discovered that his grandfather’s brother had emigrated to South Africa in the 1960s and decided that the letter was worth pursuing.

At first, he was not asked to make any payments, but, as he dealt with the investment company and the agent and saw money deposited in accounts he had been told had been opened in his name, with apparently legitimate banks in New York and Canada, he was drawn into the scam. Mr Lowdon, who is single, was told that he could travel to South Africa to handle the paperwork himself, but was advised that it would be cheaper to deal with the company’s agents in the Netherlands.

He travelled to Amsterdam for a meeting at a bank and began to speak regularly on the telephone with “Joseph”. The two men would exchange news of family and friends.

“Everything always seemed plausible,” he said. “I was sent receipts for every penny I spent.”

The final payment, of £1,580, was made in May and Mr Lowdon was supposed to travel to Amsterdam a few days later to take possession of his inheritance.

“I telephoned to make the final arrangements and there was no reply. I rang three times a day for the next few days and it rang and rang and rang. They’d disappeared.”

Mr Lowdon flew to Amsterdam with two friends to go to the agent’s business address. They found the street, but there was no house with the right number. A postman told them it did not exist. As the truth finally sank home, Mr Lowdon contacted the police.

“After the event, everyone says it was obviously a con, but hindsight is not much help,” he said. “I don’t think I was gullible and this was not a simple scam. There were people involved in South Africa, Canada and America, and they were very organised.”

Mr Lowdon said that he now felt bewildered, frustrated and let down, but insisted: “I don’t feel a fool. I thought I was tantalisingly close to being a multimillionaire and it became all-consuming. All I can do now is pick myself up, dust myself off and start all over again.”

Detective Constable John Fothergill, of South Yorkshire Police’s commercial branch, said: “We urge people not to take up correspondence with these people. All they have to do is send out letters and e-mails, and even if only one in ten thousand replies, they stand to make a lot of money.”

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