Ebay fraudster dupes hundreds

However, the experience of Matthew Pountney, one of the latest victims of the Ebay fraudster, illustrates how confusing reporting these frauds can be for consumers.

"When I called my local force to report the crime I was told to report it to the Internet Watch Foundation," he told us.

Victims of this scam are also furious that Ebay didn't do more to protect them and shut Sidozey down earlier.

Rory Miller, one of the moderators of a forum set up for the victims, said: "I'd say, along with everybody else, probably, that Ebay has been seriously remiss and handled the whole thing dreadfully, from start to finish.

"Number one, they were warned of the scam by two separate sources, on the 15 and 18 March, long before many people sent in any money.

"Number two, it seems like whatever you say to them in an email, they just reply with pro forma messages that don't address the issue at all, and just make us feel more and more ignored.

"Worst of all, though, is how they immediately wrote it off as a hijacking and removed all negative feedback, without any real investigation, as far as I can see."

Ebay gave the reason that it couldn't act the first time as initially there was no indication the account had not been hijacked and the police had not asked it to suspend the account.

This latest fraud shows how the lack of a central reporting unit makes it difficult for the police to monitor fraud online, even when it is carried out in the UK.

Although frauds such as the current one can net the criminal many thousands of pounds, individual losses tend to be less than £100. With no easy way to collate these crimes they don’t get followed up because of a lack of police resources.

Although the House of Lords select committee on personal internet security recently called on the Government to provide £1.5m of funding for a new e-crime coordination unit, there is still no sign this will happen any time soon. When we checked for an update, the Home Office said the matter was still under discussion.

Shadow home secretary David Davis sent us this statement: "The Government’s decision to axe the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit and prevent online fraud being reported directly to the police has created a double inertia in trying to tackle e-crime.

“It has left a yawning gap in the police's operational capability as well as making it almost impossible for the average person to report online fraud.

“That is why Conservatives would create a new Police National Cybercrime Unit as well as establish a Fraud and Cybercrime Complaint Centre to help the police and the public tackle this growing problem."