TRADING standards bosses are holding a special event at Accrington town hall tomorrow highlighting how fraudsters operate.

County Councillor Albert Atkinson, deputy leader of Lancashire County Council, said: “In the Hyndburn area alone over 100 different scams are reported to Trading Standards each year.

“People affected by scam mail often suffer in silence, feeling too embarrassed to speak to anyone and caught in a cycle of paying more and more money to the scammers.”

Studies put the potential cost to Lancashire residents of responding to scams at £60m every year.

The schemes to con people out of their money usually come by post, phone or email and can be about fake lotteries, unclaimed prizes, psychic readings, bogus health cures or investment scams.

Among the speakers at tomorrow’s ‘Scam Mail is Blackmail’ event which starts at 10.15am includes the daughter of an elderly woman who was traumatised by a fraudster.