Please gentle sirs, be kind to one who is english not good. I am from Australia but did move to London now and would like you to kindly send this, your item, to my godson who is studying the bible in Lagos, Nigeria.

During the past week I have had not one, not two, but three dodgy bids on a mobile phone I had for sale on eBay. They were all virtually (but not quite) the same and all had postal addresses in Lagos.

Two of the scammers sent very good fake PayPal receipts that looked almost like the real thing.

Here’s what to look for if you feel a bit uneasy about the activity on your item:

• Woeful grammar,
• Lagos postage location,
• PayPal receipt that does not correspond to your PayPal account or link to your item on eBay

The correspondence was interesting too. The two main offenders, who were very persistent, insisted that they had paid by PayPal and that I needed to send the item by Australia Post and provide them with the tracking number so that PayPal could forward the funds to me. They explained that the Hold on the funds was due to a new security process designed to protect buyers and sellers from fraudulent activity, though they didn’t say it as well as I just did.

My favourite touch though, was after the second one had been suspended by eBay, an email came through explaining that he had been reinstated and that I could go through with the transaction with him. Just read the attached email to see why I laughed for ages at the thought that they expected me to fall for this one.