QUICK thinking by post office staff in Easingwold has alerted police to a fake Microsoft fraud.

North Yorkshire Police said they noticed that two different customers within 24 hours asked them to transfer up to£4,000 to an unknown account in Poland via Moneygram.

Staff refused to process both transactions and used the banking protocol to alert police. Fraudsters had called their victims claiming to be from Microsoft and stating their computers had been infected with a virus and they could fix it, and then persuaded them to transfer money.

Police praised the Post Office staff's professional curiosity.