Conmen persuaded a Huddersfield man to pay £250 for a laptop – but instead left him with a bag containing two bottles of water.

Now network engineer Omer Chohan, who lives in Dalton, is warning others not to fall for the trick, which he says left him feeling like “an idiot.”

Omer, 36, was approached by a man in Market Street in Huddersfield town centre who asked if he wanted to buy a laptop for £300.

The man took Omer to a parked car where he showed him a MacBook Pro together with a receipt to prove the laptop was not stolen. Omer also took the precaution of checking that the serial number on the laptop matched that on the receipt.

Said Omer: “He wanted £300 for it, I offered £250 and he said that would be fine. I went to the cash machine and took out £250 and went back to his car.

“The man was sitting in the passenger seat with another man in the driving seat. He showed me the laptop, the receipt and the chargers which he put in a laptop bag.

“I took the bag from him and gave him the money and they drove off. As soon as they drive off, I realised there was something liquid in the bag. There were two big bottles of water wrapped in cardboard.”

Omer Chohan of Dalton who was the victim of a conman when buying a laptop.

Omer said he did not know how the switch was made. “Everything was so real. I don’t know how it happened or how they tricked me. I am still shocked.”

Police are investigating the incident, which happened on Tuesday, November 1. Omer was able to give police a description of the man who took his money and the car.

The man was of Eastern European appearance, aged about 35, bald and wearing a baseball cap, blue jacket and blue trousers. The car was a silver-coloured Vauxhall Astra.

At the police station, the officer Omer spoke to was able to guess what had happened before Omer could tell him. “That means it has happened before,” said Omer. “I would have hoped that people were being made aware of it.”

Omer later discovered online that the same con had been pulled in Croydon in 2012 and Birmingham in 2013.

Omer, who is in the final year of a degree course in network computing at Staffordshire University and takes up a post with computer giant Cisco in May, said: “I think of myself as pretty clever – but I feel like an idiot.

“What made me interested was the real receipt. If he did not have the receipt I would have thought the laptop was stolen and I don’t want stolen property. Everything looked so real. I thought he might be selling it because he needs the money.”

“Whatever has happened to me has happened. I know it will be really difficult to recover the money, but I don’t want them to con anyone else.”