IT was Madam Navhijjah Allaudin's first time selling a product online. Caught up in the excitement of trading, she was all ready to attract shoppers with her deal.

She and her husband, who runs a company that provides cleaning services, had bought two Samsung S-600 Digimax digital cameras for $250 each in June.

'The retail price was $399, but we got a good discount, so we bought a pair. We wanted to sell the spare camera for $300,' said Madam Navhijjah, 28.

She did not have to try very hard to attract buyers. When she posted a picture of the camera on Yahoo! Classifieds Singapore, seven people responded within a day.

The first was a Mrs Diane Finley, who said she was from Canada and offered $720 for it, including airfreight charges.

'She said she wanted that particular camera model for her father,' said Madam Navhijjah.

After throwing in a memory card, the couple would make about $150 in profit, so they quickly agreed to the sale.

The buyer wanted the camera sent to a 'Peter Olutunde' in Nigeria.

While the mention of the country may have reminded some of the reported cases of 'Nigerian scams', Madam Navhijjah said she had not known about those.

She e-mailed her bank account information to the buyer and got an e-mail reply seemingly from the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), a legitimate company.

The e-mail address had 'royalbankofcanada.com' and the e-mail had a logo that matched the logo on the bank's website.

Madam Navhijjah said: 'It looked authentic. The e-mail also had the bank's website URL, which I checked. I thought it was a reliable third-party.'

The e-mail addresses in the 'Contact us' section end with 'rbc.com', but Madam Navhijjah didn't detect those once she knew that the bank existed. So she sent the camera using DHL and e-mailed the tracking number to the bank.

And that was the last time she saw her camera.

CAMERA DELIVERED

DHL delivered the camera to a Peter Olutunde in Nigeria, who signed for it, but the buyer never paid up. Mrs Finley said that the bank was having some problems with overseas transactions.

Madam Navhijjah recalled: 'I spoke to the buyer a few times. She sounded like an old woman - she had a scratchy voice. She also sent me SMS messages, asking me to look for other items like the latest Nokia handphones.

'I wasn't too concerned about whether she was a genuine buyer because she sounded old and she was so easy to contact.'

She was so unsuspecting that within a week of sending the first camera, Madam Navhijjah had sent her second camera to another address in Nigeria. This time, the buyer was an American, called Janet Rose, who was willing to pay $700, and the e-mail replies came with Bank of America logos.

She says now: 'In hindsight, I shouldn't have sent the second camera when the first transaction had not cleared. I was too gullible.'

There days after she sent the second camera, when there was still no payment, she e-mailed RBC and Bank of America, who confirmed that they did not send her any e-mail. That was when she made a police report.

She also filed a complaint with the US-based Internet Crime Complaint Center, which is affiliated with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. 'It's been more than three months. I don't think the culprits will ever be caught.'

Mrs Finley has since stopped responding to her calls and SMS messages.

All in, Madam Navhijjah lost the two cameras, which had cost $500, a 1-gigabyte memory card worth $80, and airfreight charges of $490.

She said: 'It was only after this that I found out about the 'Nigerian scams' that have made the news. I was just too trusting and naive. This will be the last time I ever sell anything online.'