A couple were lured into remortgaging their home after being conned into claiming a bogus £1 million reward.

The elderly couple from Crowborough were persuaded to send tens of thousands of pounds to fraudsters and were on the brink of remortgaging their home to raise the further £100,000 needed to claim a phoney £1 million inheritance.

The news comes at the same time as another couple may be forced to sell their home because they cannot pay the bills after they handed over £1500 to Spanish Lottery conmen who promised them an £800,000 payout.

Jeane and Tony Trigg, from Hailsham, received a letter telling them they had been drawn out of a lottery and had won 985,950 Euros.

But after sending off a cheque as a handling fee they realised they had been tricked.

Residents in the UK lose around £3.5 billion in scams each year and East Sussex County Council's trading standards team are now clamping down on the fraudsters by starting a scamnesty campaign.

They are asking everyone who has received suspicious mailings to hand them in at their local library so that the extent of the problem in Sussex can be gauged.