A CHARITY worker has offered a warning after he was scammed by someone on Facebook Marketplace.

Robin Hood, from west of Dumfries, said that he was duped into buying a back-up electricity generator by someone claiming to be based in Carlisle.

It then turned out that multiple people are selling these items pretending to be based in different parts of Scotland.

Mr Hood bought three generators for £190 each after seeing them for sale on Facebook.

He said: "When I got them out of the box [I realised that] it was a scam and they’re useless.

"I rang him back and he said that he’d given me the wrong ones and that he’d swap them over for a better one the next week.

"It turned out that it was all a load of nonsense."

Mr Hood contacted police but they were unable to help him.

He then hired a private investigator and discovered that multiple people were involved.

He said: "I don’t know whether it’s a couple of people or whether there are six or possibly eight people involved.

"They are advertising these generators on Facebook Marketplace from different locations around the north of England and the central belt of Scotland.

"One of the guys advertised from just south of Glasgow and the next minute he was in Carlisle."

He then decided to put one the generators which he bought on Facebook Marketplace as a test.

"This man said to me ‘it’s not your turn to sell them this week, it’s my turn’.

"Then I did some more emails and it turns out that these people take it in turns to sell them.

"When people ring me up [to buy a generator], I say ‘don’t buy it, because it’s a load of junk, and beware that these are being sold in the area because it’s a scam.’

"The amount of abuse that I’m getting off these sellers is [huge]

"Every foul-mouthed word [you can imagine] they’re calling me."

He added that police said they could only help if he'd been threatened.

People have thanked him online for advising them about the scam.

He said: "All I want is to make people aware so that they do not get made to be fools as I was."