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A man wrongly identified as a fraudster has been awarded €193,000 in compensation after an initial offer of €15,000 was rejected by police.

Images of the man ended up online after an elderly woman’s bank card was used to do shopping at a Jumbo supermarket.

But the police accidentally received the photos from another branch of the supermarket chain. It showed a man, who had nothing to do with the fraud or theft, using a bank card and walking out of the store with bags full of groceries.

A news report on local broadcaster Omroep West states that he is involved in other incidents of diversion fraud, in which victims are lured into handing over money or cards under false pretenses.

The footage was deleted after the man contacted police to file a complaint. He was offered a payment of €10,000 after a police specialist calculated that the damage amounted to €15,622.

But the man disputed police assumptions that the damage would not last more than a year. He said that in his job as an accountant and driving instructor he had to endure comments, insults and jokes and had lost customers as a result of the police blunder.

The court in The Hague awarded him damages of €183,000the majority of which related to the lost property of his administration office, as well as € 10,000 for “intangible damage”.

A police spokesperson said this the power would study the judgment before deciding whether to appeal.