Cumbria Trading Standards are making residents aware of a bitcoin investment scam email that is circulating.

Action Fraud have received more 400 reports in just two days of the scam.

Victims of a prolific bitcoin scam are reporting individual losses of up to £200,000 after following links on AOL, MSN, Yahoo and Facebook.

In many cases, the fake advertorials are convincingly designed to look like pages from the BBC or Mirror websites. Action Fraud have reported that fraudsters are using fake news stories, fake websites and fake celebrity endorsements to promote bitcoin investment scams.

The links in the emails lead to websites that are designed to steal your personal and financial information.

Your bank, or any other official organisation won't ask you to share personal information over email or text. If you need to check that it's a genuine message, call them directly.

If you receive a suspicious email, you can report it by forwarding the email to the Suspicious Email Reporting Service - report@phishing.gov.uk