A JURY saw through the lies of a conman who ripped off ebay customers – and found him guilty in a little over three-quarters-of-an-hour.

Phillip Quinn pocketed hundreds of pounds a time but failed to deliver cherished Raleigh Choppers to fans of the retro bicycles.

Quinn, of Wells Close, Darlington, dreamed up a series of unbelievable excuses for people not receiving their paid-for goods.

He claimed one customer had sent a courier to his home and he should have got his bike – yet there was no record of the booking.

The victim – an the oil industry executive in Aberdeen – had received a Chopper months earlier, but it had not been as described.

When he complained to Quinn, the fraudster said he had another bike worth £800 but he would let him have it for a knockdown £500.

The man transferred the money to 60-year-old Quinn through PayPal but was left out-of-pocket when nothing at all turned up.

Quinn denied five charges of fraud, but was found guilty when a four-day trial at Teesside Crown Court came to a hasty end.

The jury of seven men and five women took just 48 minutes to dismiss the lying accounts and convict him on all the charges he faced.

Earlier this year, he admitted a count of fraud which involved him claiming his mother's pension for almost a year after her death.

He will be sentenced by Judge George Moorhouse for all the offences on October 10. He has been granted bail in the meantime.

During the trial, Quinn claimed he had driven to Carlisle with a friend to deliver a bike to another ebay bidder.

However, he could not provide the police or his own legal team with a way of contacting his seemingly fictitious friend.

Police inquiries also revealed that Quinn's car had not made the trip he claimed in three months either side of the bogus delivery.

He tried to convince the jury that he left the bike alongside a side gate, and he could not explain why the customer did not get it.

After the case, Detective Constable Neil Stannard said: "He is a serial fraudster. That has been proved beyond doubt now.

"I have no doubt whatsoever there will be more victims the police are not aware of, and I would like them to get in touch.

"If there is anyone out there who feels they have been a victim of fraud, ring the police. We have just scratched the surface."

In the earlier case, Quinn forged his mother's signature in the summer of 2010, saying she was fit and well, and pocketed £5,500.

When the fraud, carried out between March 2010 and February 2011, was detected, Quinn tried to pin the blame on a former friend.