Since landing in the United States three months ago from a country half-the-world away with little knowledge of American culture and with eyes and ears not attuned to American English, I have strained to understand the words I read or hear.

Shamim Ashraf is a reporter for The Daily Star of Dhaka, Bangladesh, who is currently working for the Post-Gazette as an Alfred Friendly Press Fellow (sashraf@post-gazette.com, 412 263-1198).

This, along with my journalistic impulse for accuracy, has made me check things at least twice since I've been here, which, as it turned out, helped save me from getting scammed on eBay while searching for a digital camera.

I have since come to learn that there are many fraudulent sellers and even organized syndicates prowling eBay and other Web sites in search of innocent buyers who might unwittingly provide personal, bank-account or credit-card information.

Trolling through the eBay auction section to buy a Nikon D200 digital camera, I found a package that included a 200-400mm lens and a 4GB memory card. I placed a bid, only to be outbid a short time later. As I was impatient to start taking pictures with my new camera, I was prepared to raise my bid.

Regular eBay Web site visitors know that you can check out a seller through features called "Ask Seller a Question" or "Contact eBay Member." So I did, but my prospective seller posted a message that said his eBay account was having problems. He asked buyers to contact him at a separate e-mail account, which I did out of my innocence, inquiring about the condition of his camera.

A short time later, the seller, who later identified himself as Alexandru, wrote that he would close the deal if I paid $800, although I had not yet asked him about the price. Eight minutes had passed when another person, named David, sent me an e-mail saying he had a similar item, with full warranty, that he would sell for $400.

How could this person know about my interest in buying a camera and get my e-mail address? The journalist in me wanted to know.

I did know that if an eBay member sends another member an e-mail, it should appear in the recipient's "My Messages" section on the eBay Web site, which is created when you first try to buy or sell an item. The two e-mails I had received from supposed sellers had arrived in my personal e-mail account.

Nevertheless, I decided to continue the conversation to see how they wanted to play this out.

In my reply to Alexandru, I said $800 was beyond my budget, and he said he would negotiate. Seeing that the highest bid had gone up to $710 by this time, I told him I could pay only $570. And he agreed!

"I'm ready to accept your proposal. I will go for 600 USD including shipping," he wrote me, saying the other bidder was a "scammer."

He didn't know that the eBay customer support unit by this time had sent me an e-mail saying that it had removed Alexandru's active listings and suspended his trading privileges. It strongly recommended that I not proceed if the seller asked me to complete a transaction outside of eBay, cautioning that such offers are likely to be fraudulent and would not be covered by eBay buyer protection programs.

My curiosity fully peaked by this point, I asked Alexandru about how I would pay him. He told me we could arrange it through eBay, using an invoice to make sure it was 100 percent protected, and he asked me to send him my full name, address, e-mail address and eBay user ID.

I later received an invoice from the "eBay Security and Resolution Center" that asked me to send the money to an address in Braila, Romania, through Western Union, adding that I would receive the tracking number for the merchandise in three days. It also said the seller had $4,174 in an eBay-managed purchase-protection account and that I could get a refund if problems arose.

Knowing that eBay does not protect payments sent via Western Union or MoneyGram, I forwarded the e-mail to eBay customer support for verification. Of course, eBay confirmed that it had not sent the invoice and asked me never to reply to such "spoof" e-mails or click on links in such messages.

In the meantime, as I was not responding, Alexandru got impatient and asked whether I had made the payment. When I told him two days later that I was unable to buy the item at the moment, he told me he would wait one week. I never contacted him again.

Before long, another alleged seller, who claimed to be from the United Kingdom, asked about my mailing address. Another started sending e-mails to my personal account seeking a private auction. Yet another, claiming to be from Eastern Europe, also wanted to know where I lived.

I was a bit overwhelmed when eBay further cautioned me about two other sellers after I inquired about their items, saying their e-mails might contain fraudulent offers to transact purchases outside of eBay.

After all this, I received an e-mail from the address that had sent me the fake invoice, and this time it was legitimate. Apparently the address previously had been hijacked by a crook.

So how is an innocent buyer supposed to know a "spoof" e-mail from one that's not? My motto is now verify, verify, verify.

Born and raised in one of the world's poorest countries, Bangladesh, I have seen all kinds of cheating and corruption but I had no idea that I would have to be so vigilant in the modern online shopping world of the United States.