Local residents were happy to enter a competition to win tickets to Southport Air Show, but something just did not feel right - after being told they had won and to claim their prize they were then asked for credit card details.

The post attracted hundreds of shares - leaving many people wide open to credit card fraud.

By the time it was noticed that OTS had been hacked it amassed hundreds of shares which resulted in many more hundreds of potential victims.

OTS has deleted the competition and left this statement for its readers: 'With regret and frustration, we feel compelled to remove our original Air Show giveaway after the competition was targeted by scam Facebook accounts.

The OTS News Southport Facebook page was cloned and misled people by suggesting they had won, before sending people to a page with a request for personal info.

After one account was blocked, another quickly popped up. Given that the attackers could just keep creating pages, saving the original post was not possible.

We have contacted Facebook and Google, and stressed the urgent need to take any and all possible action.

We do plan to restore the competition, in a different format, this evening. Existing entries have been saved.

We're truly sorry for this inconvenience and will have more details this evening.'

Southport Media contacted OTS for comment, but no one was available.

Were you affected by the scam ?

Reported by Blake Maynard of Southport Media

Can't spell affected either.