HE knew about Nigerian scams but didn't think twice about selling a used laptop to a buyer in Nigeria.
After all, he figured, what do Nigerian scams have to do with selling something on the Internet?
Big mistake.
Instead of the $1,000 he had hoped to receive, he could end up losing his wife's used IBM ThinkPad laptop.
The businessman, who wants to be known only as Daryn, also paid about $310 to deliver it to an address in Lagos, the most populous city in Nigeria.
After he found out that the buyer was not going to pay him, he told SingPost to intercept the delivery, for which he has to pay another $310.
SingPost is still waiting for a response from the Nigerian postal services. But if the laptop has already been delivered, Daryn can kiss it goodbye.
When he put up the two-year-old ThinkPad, which he bought for $2,500, on Yahoo Auctions on 2 Nov, a 'Mrs Juliet Jones' contacted him using online instant messaging.
Mrs Jones, who said she lived in London, was the only bidder and the deal was closed within a few days. She told Daryn that she wanted the laptop to be sent to her son in Nigeria.
On 7 Nov, he received an e-mail that looked like a message from PayPal, a popular online payment system.
It stated that Ms Jones had transferred the payment to his account and he would receive the money once he can show the laptop has been sent to the recipient.
It turned out later the e-mail was not from PayPal.
Daryn said: 'The e-mail looked authentic. It has the PayPal banner and e-mail address. So I had no reason to think it wasn't from PayPal.'
So he went ahead and sent the laptop to Nigeria through SingPost a week ago.
Out of goodwill, he even agreed to pay the postage costs as Mrs Jones said she would pay the balance once the computer reached her son.
When no money was deposited into his PayPal account, Daryn sent PayPal several e-mails to check.
When he contacted Mrs Jones, she apologised and said she could transfer the money directly to Daryn's bank account.
At the same time, she asked if Daryn could sell jewellery to 'my wife' living in the US.
'This set off alarm bells as I thought Juliet Jones was a woman. So how can she have a wife?' said Daryn.
He checked with PayPal again and was told the e-mail dated 7 Nov was a fake.
Daryn's wife said: 'It's unsettling that someone can fake an e-mail message from PayPal. We've heard of the Nigerian scam before.
'But we didn't know we would become victims of Internet fraud as sending the laptop to Nigeria had nothing to do with the Nigerian scam.'
