COUNCILLORS and Labour Party members have been victim of social media hacks.

Fake social media profiles have been posing as councillors and Labour Party representatives, including Millom councillor Robert ‘Bob’ Kelly, who lives on Windermere Gardens.

The simulation profile has been adding various Facebook users around Millom and beyond to as far as the Furness area, asking these users to click on a link to win large sums of money.

Councillor Bob Kelly said: “My friends on Facebook within Millom have been getting strange messages from a fake Bob Kelly profile."

The messages stated Mr Kelly had won £250,000 from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and asked other users to click on the link.

"I'm angry that someone has done this, but I am also relieved everyone of my friends are sensible enough to question the fake profile messages," said Mr Kelly.

However, Mr Kelly revealed he is not alone.

According to the Millom councillor, other representatives of Copeland have fallen victim to scammers cloning their social media profiles.

"Currently I'm aware former conservative Copeland councillor Jean Lewthwaite has had her profile cloned," he said.

"There have also been several members of the Copeland Labour Party, who've had their accounts doubled."

Mr Kelly has spoken to the Labour Party representatives as well as Ms Lewthwaite, and it seems their feelings about the district-wide scamming situation are shared.

He said: "It can be annoying because it has caused a lot of disruption.

"I've had to contact over 20 people to inform them the profile contacting, which is time consuming."

Mr Kelly stated if anyone has been contacted by a profile posing as him, or any other profile that is claiming a win of a large sum, they should ignore it and report the profile.

The Facebook hack comes days after Millom Post Office last week warned the Millom public about telephone scams after several customer complaints.