US police are investigating an eBay scam that uses photographs of sports cars lifted from car dealers' websites.

The scam was spotted when a dealer noticed that a 2001 Volvo V70 Turbo station wagon had sold on eBay for $23,000 and a 2001 Chevrolet Corvette ended up with a bid of $30,500.

However, both cars were in his depot at Clearwater in Florida, their pictures were still on his website and he had not put them on eBay.

According to the St Petersburg Times, a con artist had stolen the photos and used them to create the eBay auction listings.

Each listing showed an expensive vehicle offered for much less than its current value with a Hotmail address for the seller. So far the paper has found seven bogus entries on eBay, all of which have now been removed.

Although claiming to be from Florida, the seller asks for a 15 per cent deposit to be wired to a bank in Latvia through Deutsche Bank Trust Company Americas in New York.