Peter Smith (not his real name) had decided as so many of us do to sell items on Ebay, in this case a PS3. A buyer from Nigeria won the auction and seemed happy to pay the £400 price and the costs of carriage.

Arrangements were made to pay through Paypal. On receipt of what appeared to be Paypal's confirmation that the money had been deposited, Peter took the item to the Post Office to send to Nigeria. By good fortune he decided also to call Paypal to be sure that the money owed would be released, only to find that the apparent email had not come from Paypal at all but from a fraudster. He turned to me to ask for help.

Luckily on this occasion I was able to contact the Post Office to ask them to stop the parcel from leaving the country. It had reached Coventry but we were just in the nick of time and it had not yet been despatched overseas. Apparently three parcels had been similarly stopped that same day by people who had fallen for this scam.

So it's a happy ending on this occasion at least - but I'm passing on this story to warn residents to be wary of this particular scam. The Internet is a great thing but we all need to be vigilant of the fraudsters who are out there and who can easily take advantage of our trust.