A Center Parcs scam managed to trick more than 17,000 people in a matter of hours

Thousands of people were tricked by a fake Center Parcs page that was offering a huge prize into giving away their personal details.

Trading Standards has warned people about a Center Parcs scam that tricked more than 17,000 people in a matter of hours.

The fake Center Parcs page was set up to offer people a chance to win a free stay at the Longleat resort in Warminster.

But the competition – and page – were fake, designed to scam people into giving away their personal information or to help grow the fake page. 

Wiltshire Trading Standards (WTS) issued a warning online urging people to recognise scams and remain vigilant on social media.

Taking to Facebook, WTS shared images of the scammer’s page and post which promised ‘a free Center Parcs holiday for 4 at Longleat and £500 to spend’, including ‘free travel’.

WTS wrote: “Spoiler Alert – You aren’t going to win a holiday but you may lose out to scammers. This page was set up 3 hours ago and already has almost 18k shares.

“The page was only set up today and does not belong to the official @centerparcsuk.”

The post continued: “Scammers set up these pages to obtain your personal data or to collect likes (in this case the page is later sold/changed names by the scammers to fill your newsfeed with spam).

“By ‘signing up’ you’re giving the scammers your personal details.

“Our advice is to spend a few minutes checking out pages before liking and sharing posts such as these. When was the page set up? How many posts are on the original page?

“Does the page have the blue tick to confirm the profile is the official page of the business it’s claiming to be?”

Some people commented on the post explaining they couldn’t believe some people fell for the trick.

One user wrote: “The old adage applies to the internet as well. If something looks too good to be true it probably is.”

Another wrote: “If you do fall for this maybe you shouldn’t be allowed on the internet unsupervised.”

A spokesperson for Center Parcs said: “Like a lot of well-known brands, our brand name has been used without permission by unauthorised Facebook pages on a number of occasions.

“We have been made aware of an unauthorised page on Facebook offering the chance to win a Center Parcs break and can confirm this is not genuine. We have reported this to Facebook.

“We would like to remind people not to enter their details or share the page. If ever in doubt about a post, please visit our official Facebook page to check if it is genuine.”

The page has now been removed, however another similar one was created on the same day, already gaining 56,000 likes.