ENGINEER Peter Levett is pleading with NatWest bosses to get their fax right

For the multi-million pound bank is costing the 48-year-old engineer a fortune in fax paper by sending him reams of highly confidential information.

Mr Levett, from Ovington, in Teesdale, County Durham, says he has received personal documents regarding NatWest customers for the past three years.

They have included loan applications for up to £5,000 and details on how one customer could pick up £500 cash from his local branch, without identification.

He says he has also been sent pages of documents detailing customers' addresses, wages, phone numbers, balances and overdraft limits.

The confusion centres around his fax number, which only differs to NatWest's Woldingham branch, in Surrey, by one digit.

But despite reporting the mix-up on several occasions, and even showing his local branch manager some of the confidential information, the faxes keep coming.

Mr Levett, 48, said: "I'm sick to death of getting these faxes and I just want something to be done about it because it's costing me an arm and a leg in paper.

"I've told them exactly how sensitive some of the details are but nothing has been done about it.

"I could have forged signatures or picked up money pretending to be someone else because it was all there in the faxes. Luckily for NatWest I'm an honest bloke."

So far, he has destroyed hundreds of pages of information about dozens of customers since buying his fax machine in 1998.

The latest fax, which arrived last week, was an internal memo totalling 30 pages of advice for staff on how to sell pensions to customers.

Ronan Kelleher, public relations manager for NatWest, said the company had spoken to Mr Levett and that staff would attempt to trace all the senders of the faxes. He added: "We are taking this matter very seriously. It would appear that it's a genuine mistake of mis-dialing."