Well it was my first time selling a mobile phone on ebay, but i decided to brave it. To my surprise within 12hrs of listing the phone i had a buyer. Brilliant!! No not so brilliant...

Luckily i had read through other peoples listings before adding my own and noticed that a lot of people were saying no Nigerian buyers. Thats discrimination i thought, but nethertheless still didn't think much of it.....that is until my phone sold under Buy it Now, within 12 hrs of listing, to a Nigerian bloke!

Warning signs of the scam:

• Suspiciously quick purchase, for full amount.
• Registered in London/UK but wants it posted to Nigeria "for sons birthday".
• A broken english email with "ok" at the end of each sentence.
• A fake email from paypal.
• Nothing in your paypal account.
• Ebay status "awaiting payment".

Here is the email I got (address deleted):

• I keep all my old paypal emails and noticed that they appear in my inbox differently to the scam emails. The scam email appeared as - Service@ Paypal.com (Note the space after the @ and the capital letters).
• The header of the email also read "The Payment Has Been Approved**Payment ID Number ____". After looking through my inbox i had never received a message with this style of subject from Paypal before.
• I actually received 2 emails from the fake Paypal.com address, the first a transaction receipt and the second the "payment approval", which upon checking the amount that this bloke had apparently paid me, was £40 more than i listed the item for! Worth checking this.
• The main body format was also different. When Paypal have sent an email before it appears as a blue template with the paypal logo, similar to the packing slips that you print when sending an item through the post. Here is what i got (highlighted the spelling mistakes - i think Paypal staff should be able to spell!):
                                                  "***ATTENTION***
  Paypal customer care will like to infom you that payment for your
  ebay item  Samsung D900 (New Boxed)+Car Charger+ All accessories (________),Bought from you  by
  ________ has been APPROVED, you CAN NOW ship the merchandise to
  the buyer's shipping address. You are expected to make the shipment
  within 48 hours of recieving this Payment Approval Notification and
  get  back to our Costumer/Technical Dept. with the Tracking Number
  for Shippment Verification."

I have emailed ebay with the message details and copied the header in (this helps track the scammers and where they sent it from- the help tool has all the info). The guy is no longer a registered user and i'm emailing paypal the fake emails. I'm just really disappointed because i love ebay and although I noticed in time, others have not been so lucky.

Lets hope they get caught!!!