Anyone can become a victim of fraudsters – even officers serving in the police.

Police revealed the cunning lengths fraudsters can go when advising Irvine’s community councillors on the latest scam prevention tips last week – after one member said she recently fell victim to a BBC TV licence fraud.

PC Colin Johnson said: “Cyber crime is big business, the problem you have is they change all the time.

“Has anyone been on Facebook and seen ‘Ray-Bans for £15 – stock clearance’? You look at the site an think there is no way that’s Ray-Bans, its Chinese fraudsters.

“What’s quite impressive is I know a couple of cops who were quite embarrassed to have been suckered into this.

They were only down £15 but passed details to a fraudster.”

After one community councillor said he liked ‘wind up’ scammers on the phone, PC Johnson added: “Be very cautious. Four or five years ago I was on the night shift driving and my colleague got a phone call from ‘Microsoft’.

“We basically kept this guy on for 20 minutes pretending we were too stupid to turn on our computer. My colleague came in a month later and after getting his phone bill discovered it was a reverse charge call from India at £30 a minute.”

“I have interviewed doorstep criminals and they are very good at what they do, they are fantastic fraudsters they are incredible salespeople. I’ve been halfway through an interview with all this evidence in front of me and even then I start to suspect they are innocent. Consequently a lot of victims are hard to engage with.”