A MAN has been jailed for 18 months for a £54,000 eBay scam which targeted hundreds of innocent victims.

Jonathon Hartley. 26, had set up five accounts on the internet auction site using false names and addresses.

He conned eBay out of almost £40,000 in the 18 month deception as well as cheating more than 640 customers out of a total of £15,000 Burnley Crown Court heard.

Hartley had tricked his customers by first building up their trust with above board sales of electrical goods and then setting out to defraud them.

He had twice used what turned out to be real addresses to get his accounts on the internet and one vulnerable casualty of his "reckless dishonesty" was a multiple sclerosis sufferer in Barrow in Furness who ended up with the bailiffs at her door demanding £2,750.

The defendant, who had £90,000 stashed away in two bank accounts, did not live the high life and was described by his family as dull and boring.

He was said to have got involved in the fraud in 2006 and 2007 after he went to Hong Kong with his Chinese girlfriend, the court was told.

The defendant, of Scotland Road, Nelson, had earlier admitted five charges of obtaining services by deception, five of fraud and one of money laundering- converting criminal property.

Sentencing, Judge Simon Newell told Hartley: "This is a sophisticated, systematic and on the face of it, complicated, fraud of a large number of innocent people."

He slammed the defendant, who fought back tears in the dock, as a coward as he had not had to face the people he defrauded.

The judge said everyone was in the dark as to why Hartley had done it as he did not appear to spend any money. Hartley will face a proceeds of crime hearing in March.

Jeremy Grout-Smith, prosecuting, said in 2007 the Lancashire Constabulary website received 32 complaints from the public over the conduct of a company trading through eBay.

More than 1,630 complaints were received nationwide and beyond and of those 642 were formalised. Hartley had sold MP3 and MP4 digital players and memory sticks. Goods were either never sent or illegal cloned goods were dispatched.

Philip Curran, defending, said: “He has learned his lesson. If he didn't understand how serious this was, he understands now."