YORK’S ‘World Cup Lottery’ winner Simon Proctor has received a copy of a cheque for £725,000 - along with an apparent request for him to pay £7,250 before he can receive the real thing.

It is the latest twist to his alleged lottery success, which began recently when he received a letter telling him he had won the huge sum in a ‘International FIFA World Cup Online Lottery’.

FIFA told The Press that the ‘lottery’ had “no connection whatsoever” with, or authorisation from it and it advised people not to respond.

Mr Proctor said he had never bought a ticket for such a lottery and wanted to alert other people who might receive a similar letter, fearing they might be asked to pay a fee to receive their winnings.

Now he has received a copy of a ‘Commonwealth Bank of Switzerland’ cheque’ for £725,000 in the post, accompanied by a letter from the ‘United Nations Organisation’ which appears to bear out such concerns.

It said it had “come to the attention of the Authority of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), and crimes through our intelligence monitoring network, that International FIFA World Cup Online Lottery has sent a lottery winning cheque of £725,000 to your Address”.

It then said: “The said fund after due investigation was contrary to Article 1-2 Section 36 sub-section IV of the 1996 Bank and other Financial Institution Decree (BOFID) guiding against transfer of funds without an International Clearance Invoice on Source of Fund from the United Nations Monitoring Unit on all International Monetary Transaction Related Matter.

“It is unfortunate that the above referenced fund was transferred without proper consultation with this Agency for the official attachment of Clearance Invoice on Source of fund.”

It said this was in line with a bilateral agreement reached after the September 11, 2001, bombing of the World Trade Centre, and any amount exceeding £500,000 must be cleared by the agency.

It advised Mr Proctor to apply for Clearance Certificates, adding: “Your cheque has been placed on Temporal Hold pending when you settle the clearance charge of one per cent of your winning fund.”

York trading standards department has said previously that if people received correspondence out of the blue, saying they had won money, they should be suspicious, adding: “When it looks too good to be true, it probably is.”