Police are warning elderly people to be on their guard from bogus callers who claim they have parcels to deliver.
Two men, described as being in their 20s and speaking with Irish accents, called at the house of an elderly woman in Cornell Close, Witham.
The men knocked on the woman's door in the afternoon and said they had a parcel which they had placed behind a pile of bricks on the front garden.
A police spokeswoman said: "The woman, who is in her 70s, did the right thing and did not leave her house and the two men eventually left."
In a separate incident an 85-year-old woman has answered the door of her home in Chelmsford to a man who said he had a parcel to deliver.
She allowed the man into the house and he stole £40 in cash.
The two men, believed to be the ones in the Witham incident were spotted in the Honeysuckle Way area, near Cornell Close, sitting in a blue Ford Sierra Sapphire.
Published Monday December 17, 2001
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