A woman had more than £2,000 stolen from her bank account in a parking meter con.

Sue Land, 68, from Radlett, was shopping with her 93-year-old mother in Edgware on January 13, when she was approached by a well-dressed man of north African descent in Station Road, who said he did not have a card to pay for a parking meter.

The man, who professed to speak little English and said his wife and child were in a nearby car, asked whether he could pay her £10 in cash so she could use her card to pay for the parking.

When she did this, Ms Land said the card was taken up into the machine, and the man said he would help her find it, by pressing buttons on the machine.

He said he would return to help her but instead, he left her at the machine.

She called her bank to cancel the card but already two transactions of £500 had been removed and £1,050 from inside a bank.

She said: "I still feel very miserable. I have been robbed at home many years ago but face to face scamming, seeing his face in my mind is hard to deal with.

"My mother lives in Edgware and I am there regularly shopping for her at the moment and I hate it. I never want to go there again!

"I look at the parking ticket machines and feel everyone is at risk. I really don’t know if the machine had been tampered with, or someone else saw my pin."

Ms Land now believes the man removed her card form the machine without her seeing it.

Police believe the incident with Ms Land may be connected to a similar theft which happened two days earlier in Golders Green Road, Golders Green.

In this incident, which took place at around 12.15pm, a women in her 80s was asked for help paying for a parking meter, who then fraudulently obtained her cards to withdraw money.

The suspect on January 11 was described as a well-dressed man in his fifties, wearing a grey flat cap and grey trousers.

No arrests have been made. Enquiries are ongoing. 

For advice on how to protect yourself from scams, visit the Met Police's scams advice page.