Motorists buying second-hand used cars could get caught out by a major online scam targeting social media sites.

Sherwood Cooke Jnr, owner of car garage Royalty Auto Service, claimed road users could be unknowingly caught out by fraudsters when purchasing petrol, diesel or electric vehicles.

He claimed the scam is likely to target those searching for second hand vehicles on social media sites such as Facebook instead of at local dealerships.

Speaking on his TikTok channel @royaltyautoservice, Sherwood said: “I saw this online, here’s what’s happening, You want to buy a car and you got to a used car list website, You think you got their website.

“Let’s just say it's ‘Joe’s used car lot’, so you find 'Joe's used car lot’ website and it looks all legit and everything, It's got pictures of him on there and everything and they show some cars.

“So you message Joe’s used car lot and say ‘hey, I'm looking at this car’ and they go ‘yeah I got it for sale, we can sell it to you frio this just fill out this credit application, once you get approved we will tell; you how much you need, you send that to us and we will deliver the car to you’.

“This is a normal thing these days for people to buy online. So what happens is you fill out a credit application with this company and they run your credit and go ‘yeah you are approved’.

“So you pay them the money and now you expect the car to be delivered. And the car never comes.

“Then you find out ‘Joe's car lots’ phone number and you call them or you go into the car lot and you're face to face with them.

“They have no idea they don't know anything about it, they've never talked to you and now you're mad at them.

“Reality is somebody created a fake Facebook page or a fake website and you thought you were talking to ‘Joe’s car lot’ and you're talking to a scammer.”

It means drivers would likely completely lose the deposit saved for the car even if this is all of their savings.

However, more concerning is the possible future consequences of handing over so much personal information to possible criminals.

Sherwood added: “You’ve given them every bit of your personal information by filling out a credit application.

“Now they’ve got your money, they've got all your information, who knows what they are going to do with that. It's just a bad thing overall.”