BT and Britain's telephone service regulators have moved to reassure people that a rumoured £260 telephone fraud is just that a rumour.

The Evening Advertiser contacted BT and ICSTIS (the Independent Committee for the Supervision of Standards of Telephone Information Services) after being forwarded copies of an e-mail headed Scam Warning.

It was forwarded to the newspaper by worried groups, firms and private individuals in Swindon.

The e-mail tells of a fraud in which victims are telephoned and played a recorded message, saying they have won a valuable prize.

Usually, this prize is described as a holiday of a lifetime.

Victims are asked to press the 9 key, and this, according to the e-mail, triggers a connection to a premium rate line on which another recording explains the holiday details. It then asks for the victim's postcode, only to say the victim is not a winner.

The next the victim knows of the scam, says the e-mail, is when a telephone bill for about £260 arrives.

However at BT, spokesman Jason Mann said the firm had no record of any of its millions of customers suffering in such a way, and also voiced doubts that such an operation was technically possible.

And at ICSTIS, spokeswoman Charlotte Jordan said such a charge was not possible, as the maximum premium rate fee is £1.50 per minute, whereas it would have to be about £25 per minute for the e-mail to be true.