A COMPUTER student conned buyers out of thousands of pounds by placing bogus adverts on eBay in a bid to pay off his university debts.

Imran Akram pocketed

£10,500 after advertising laptop computers and console games on the internet auction site.

He took money from buyers in California and Ohio but, in fact, had no goods to sell.

Akram, a former computer science student at Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh, pleaded guilty to the fraud at the city's sheriff court yesterday.

The 27-year-old ran the scam from October 2003 using eBay and their payments arm PayPal.

They reported him to police in the USA and Scotland after 42 people complained they had not received goods they had bought.

Akram, of Mortonhall in Edinburgh, admitted setting up the scam when interviewed by police in November 2005.

He said he ended the fraud after paying off a university debt.

Ewen Roy, defending, said Akram had remortgaged his house and repaid PayPal in full.

The company administrator avoided jail yesterday when Sheriff Elizabeth Jarvie, QC, instead ordered him to carry out 225 hours of community service.

She told him: "This was a serious offence."