SCHOOLBOY thieves posing as litter collectors raising money for school funds are preying on the elderly in Bolton.

The young crooks have been asking pensioners to contribute money for their sponsored clean-up of the streets outside their homes.

And today, as police probed a spate of crimes by schoolboy "conmen," the elderly have been warned to be on their guard.

In one incident two teenage boys knocked on Harry Holstead's home in Luton Street, near Burnden Park, claiming to be raising money for Hayward School.

The boys accepted the pensioner's money and promised to return in the next few days to clean up Mr Holstead's street. But they never returned. Mr Holstead reported the incident to his local councillor Peter Birch who said: "Mr Holstead was concerned that the boys had been bogus so I went up to the school and talked to the headteacher and the chairman of governors.

"They told me that there had not been any fund-raising for more than a year and the boys were definitely not collecting money on behalf of the school."

Cllr Birch has since discovered that elderly people in the Great Lever area around Sandham Walk have also been approached by teenagers operating a similar scam.

He said: "I just want to warn people that youngsters who ask them for sponsorship money may not be legitimate. Unless people are really sure who the youngsters are, and, where they are from, they should not give them any money."

The matter has been reported to wardens in charge of sheltered housing throughout Great Lever.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.