Douglas based Civil Investigators Expol Limited advise the public to be cautious when buying or selling on the internet site Ebay. It follows a case this week where the assistance of Expol was sought by a purchaser based in England who was requested to pay several thousand pounds for a mini digger apparently being sold by an Isle of Man resident.

Investigators discovered that the named seller did not exist and that the occupant of the Douglas address used had no knowledge of the seller or the machine offered for sale. The seller had requested that funds be transferred into a Scottish Bank.

Director at Expol Limited, David Bell said, "This is not the first time we have dealt with an internet fraud of this type. Fortunately in this case the buyer suspected that something was wrong and contacted us before transferring the funds. It is convenient for fraudsters to use an offshore address for internet selling because of the difficulty for UK buyers to personally inspect items prior to paying. It appears that the address used was probably picked at randon from the Isle of Man Telephone Directory. Had the funds been transferred it is likely that they would have been immediately transferred outside of the UK banking system. Buyers ineed to take the utmost care when purchasing high value items from unknown sources on the internet. Fortunately in this case we were able to save the buyer several thousand pounds by exposing the scam".