One day, you're blithely surfing eBay and stumble across a Ziggy Zebra Beanie Baby--the perfect gift for your little rug rat. So you place a bid, then another bid, and another. Finally, you manage to snag the thing out from under a dozen other eBay buyers.

But when the package arrives days later, it's no Beanie Baby. It's not even a zebra. It's hell-spawn evil incarnate, a thing from a world not our own. You've been slimed by the dark forces of eBay.

Only a tiny fraction of the 1.3 million daily transactions on Internet auction sites results in fraud. But that still means thousands of people get ripped off each day. In fact, auction fraud accounts for nearly three-quarters of all complaints posted to the Internet Crime Center. And still thousands more experience terrifyingly annoying auction hijinks, including sky-high fees.

Don't become a statistic. You can easily protect yourself against auction fraud and related trauma if you follow our advice. Come with us now as we embark on today's episode of eBay nightmares.

	Monday's monster: the product that wasn't there
	Tuesday's terror: the incredible shrinking bargain
	Wednesday's witch: when goods go bad
	Thursday's thriller: bidder beware!
	Friday's fiend: attack of the phishers