A woman who ran an internet auction scam from her home was brought to justice with help from the Derby Evening Telegraph.

Eight customers paid money after bidding for computers on the world wide web, spending more than £8,000 between them.

The scam was uncovered after one of the aggrieved parties e-mailed the Telegraph from America to say he hadn't received the equipment he bid for, and named the firm involved - Derby Laptops.

The Evening Telegraph decided to confront the couple who ran it.

After several unreturned phone calls, e-mails and fruitless visits to their house, a reporter finally met one of the partners, Bryan Fussell.

He answered the door but declined to comment and said he would rather talk in the presence of his wife and business partner, Sarah Webber. He promptly disappeared back into the house and refused to come out again.

In the meantime, the pair's aggrieved customers had formed an action group in an effort to get their money back.

The customers kept in contact with each other via e-mail and their pressure, coupled with that of the Telegraph, which supplied documents to the police on the matter, Webber was sentenced to an 18-month community rehabilitation order at Shrewsbury Crown Court this week.

She denied eight charges of obtaining money transfers by deception.

Dan Hagan, of Virginia, who was the first person to alert the Evening Telegraph to Derby Laptops Limited, said: "I had pretty much given up hope of ever hearing that this case was really going to trial.

"I did try to get the FBI interested in looking into Fussell's whereabouts, but nothing much came of it other than a letter.

"I did not hear anything for a long time. Then the Evening Telegraph contacted me to say that she was in court. I'd like to thank the paper. If it had not published the story, I don't think Sarah Webber would ever have gone before a court."

Sergeant Dave McDonald, who initially led the inquiry, said: "Our inquiries were initiated due to information supplied to us by the Evening Telegraph. We also received other information from customers directly to us from as far afield as China, Korea and America.

"We tied everything together and applied for a warrant to search the Vivian Street home of Sarah Webber and Brian Fussell.

"When we visited, we were given the same excuses that the customers had been given - that they were having problems with suppliers. We believed that these suppliers never existed."

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