If someone claiming to be the chairman of Lincolnshire County Council tells you he has millions of US dollars, it most certainly won't be him.

Coun Martin Hill was the victim of impersonation fraud yesterday, but fortunately no-one seems to have fallen for the attempt.

A Spalding resident said he had been contacted through social media 'out of the blue' from a fake Mr Hill, to say he had been awarded $150million (£120million) by a US government agency to spend on local economic recovery.

Mr Tony Britton tweeted: "He's already ignored my perfectly innocent inquiry about whether he's been given sufficient powers to develop local public health capacity.

"[Iwas] Then told to contact third party on Facebook and tell him a good friend had sent for details of the scheme. Alarm bells so loudly, I check his Twitter profile. So obviously a clone account and at this stage I'm the only follower."

Mr Britton alerted Lincolnshire County Council who put out warnings through its twitter account and that of Lincolnshire Trading Standards standards. It comes as the county council has been joining other organisations in raising awareness of various frauds and scams.

A county council spokesman told Nub News today: "We have had this before, with a different fake Martin Hill. It is something we are on the look out for. Twitter are really good at this. They took the fake account down when we reported it to them."

Coun Martin Hill told Nub News: "These things happen. It wasn't me. It's very unfortunate that this goes on but it does go on. It comes with the territory. If you get correspondence from somebody and it doesn't seem right, you have to be extremely careful. If in doubt just get rid of it."

Coun Hill added such frauds are a growing problem and he would never have any money to tweet about like this.