Eight people in the US who used eBay to flog gear are to cough up almost $90,000 (£48,575) after admitting they artificially inflated the price of their goods by bidding themselves. The $90,000 will be used to pay back more than 120 people who were ripped off by the scam, reported AP, with the rest used to settle fines.

The goods on offer included cars, art and dodgy sports memorabilia. In each of the cases the price of the items was often way over what they were worth as those behind the scams kept bidding themselves to push up the price. One chap who paid well over the odds when he bought a Cherokee jeep said: "I'd always been suspicious, because it seems like an easy thing to do, to just keep bidding up. But I was still just completely shocked." ®

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