When fraudsters phoned 76-year-old Trevor Wade and asked him to transfer all his cash into a new bank account, the vigilant pensioner smelt a rat.

Now he’s speaking out about his near-miss in the hope he can keep others safe, too.

Trevor, of Woodbridge Road, near Mayesbrook Park, received the bogus phone call on Monday morning.

“They said they were from Visa,” he said. “They said they’d detected some suspicious activity on my card and it could be someone at the bank doing the fiddling.

“So they asked me to go to the bank and change my account. They gave me a new account number, but it was with Barclays in Walthamstow and I bank with NatWest.

“They said to transfer all my money into this new account.

“Of course it seemed very suspicious.”

After calling his sister, who works in banking, he was satisfied the fraud was just that.

Quick-thinking Trevor told the man on the phone he was heading down to his bank to transfer the cash, but stayed at home – during which time the fraudster called him again to find out whether he had left the house.

Worryingly, the man seemed to know personal details about Trevor, such as what car he drives, prompting Trevor to worry he might have been targeted.

But eventually Trevor revealed he was onto the trickster, quoting some Lewis Carroll verse down the phone at him before hanging up.

A Visa spokesman said the firm would never contact customers about their bank accounts – people’s banks will always do that directly.