PARENTS across Southampton have warned of a potential art selling scam in residential areas of the city.

Residents in Sholing, Woolston and West End have reported a door-knocking scheme where Polish men and women are walking from door-to-door trying to sell paintings.

The salespeople are either using signs to say that they are deaf or telling residents that they need money for art tuition or treatment to help them hear again and then ask for a small sum of money Jungle Mania Southampton took to Facebook to warn families across the city that this could be a dangerous scam.

Southampton mum Carly Kinsey posted on the playgroup site that she had seen a Polish girl with ginger hair in a plait walking along Butts Road yesterday.

Carly said: “She appeared to be doing every other house. She didn't claim to be deaf though as she spoke.

"I turned her straightaway. I've also had previously a woman and man claiming to be deaf. I've called the police and reported it each time.”

Cleaner, Anna Vance also posted to say that she had come across this scam leaving a house she cleans in Sholing.

She said: “I just told him that the pictures were very nice but I didn't want to buy one. He was fine though. Not threatening or anything.

"It's the sob story on the card that they show you which is usually the deception or scam, not the selling of the prints and pictures.”

Tasha Coleman added: “I've just had a man at the door trying to sell me exactly the same thing. Said he was from Poland and then passed me a piece of paper saying he needed cash for his studies.”

According to popular parental website netmums.com this art scam has been taking over streets across the UK with people from Great Yarmouth, Lancashire, Cornwall and Buckinghamshire taking to the site to report a problem.

One woman from Cornwall told members of the site about her experience of an alleged deaf man trying to sell her a fake painting and that it was a “confidence trick.”

She said that it’s an international scam which immigrants from China, France, Canada, New Zealand and now Poland are using.

They apparently pose as an art student trying to sell mass-produced paintings or prints and misrepresent this work as an original painting, asking for money to pay for tuition fees or art supplies.

Hampshire police are yet to comment on the scam.