RIVERTON (AP) - A couple was bilked out of $6,000 after a man offered to buy their 1971 Plymouth Duster over the Internet.

Trish Horton and James Thorpe posted the car for sale in November on www.southernmopar.org, where cars and related items are sold regularly.

Their asking price was $1,000. The car went up for bid and the couple accepted the top offer of $2,000 from an Eddie Brown, of Nigeria.

"He said he restored cars," Horton said.

They thought the buyer was legitimate.

Brown sent the couple a $6,000 cashier's check through United Parcel Service. "We were to take $4,000 of the money and send it to London to a shipping agent who was to take care of the shipping to Nigeria," said Horton.

Horton said Brown claimed it would save him money to write one check instead of two checks. Believing Brown's cashier's check to be backed up with money in an account, the couple cashed the check, deposited the money in their own account, then wrote a $4,000 check and mailed it to London.

Horton said they spent the rest of the money to pay off bills and thought the next person they would hear from was the London shipping agent calling to make arrangements.

What they heard instead was a bank representative telling them their account was frozen because the $6,000 cashier's check was no good.

They received the news on Dec. 23 as they were Christmas shopping separately. Both tried to use their bank debit cards and found that the transactions would not clear.

Horton called their bank's 24-hour hotline and was told that their account was overdrawn by $6,000. "The bank said they would allow us 30 days to come up with the $6,000," said Horton.

Horton said the request would have been devastating to them - both 19-year-old college students - had her father, Matt Horton, not been able to get a loan for the money.

However, they expect to spend the next five years paying off the money because they don't expect Brown to ever be caught.

According to The 419 Coalition, a group that has been tracking Nigerian scams since the early 1980s, the scam is the latest to originate from the African country.

"Never believe a cashier's check is good until you call the bank its written from," Horton said. "You can have a bank look up the bank's phone number."

Thorpe recommended never selling anything online without insurance. "If we would have bought insurance, we would not have been held responsible," he said.

They considered it, but it would have cost $26, which sounded like too much at the time.