A Chicago woman bid $1.75 for an abandoned house auctioned on eBay and won.

Joanne Smith, 30, bested seven other bidders of the Saginaw, Michigan house auctioned off by its anonymous owner, who bought it for an undisclosed amount. The bidding started at five cents and the second highest bid was $1.50.

A Briton has informed authorities that a computer he bought through eBay for $142 contained data on several million credit card customers. The incident has sparked an investigation in the U.S. and the U.K.

The buyer, 56-year-old IT manager Andrew Chapman of Oxford, England, contacted authorities when he found on the computer's hard drive the account numbers, passwords, cell phone numbers and signatures of credit card customers of the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), its subsidiary NatWest and American Express.

A British Lord is selling his life - including his title, estate, luxury cars and little black book on eBay. David Piper, the 58-year old Lord of Warleigh, said he's taking the action to finance treatment for advanced prostate cancer.

As of early afternoon Eastern, the online auction has a top bid of nearly $4 million. Among the items Piper has put up for auction: his 111-acre estate near Plymouth, his family's art collection, two Bentley automobiles and a black book containing the names of women who answered a 2002 newspaper ad for a mate.

German authorities have returned an infant to its parents after a joke went afoul about selling the baby boy on eBay for $1. The twenty-something parents' admission halted a days-long probe into potential baby trafficking.

In a May 24 auction that was online less than three hours, a writer advertised the baby was for sale because it "has gotten too loud." Internet auction giant eBay quickly removed the ad.

Abuse of government-issued credit card privileges made the headlines in the U.S. and Canada this week. A few days after the U.S. General Accountability Office reported widespread charging of unauthorized items among federal employees, a Canadian bureaucrat made news by charging $230,000 to her state-issued credit card to buy souvenir coins which she deposited in her personal bank account.

Veronica Topic, 24, later withdrew the money, purchased electronic gadgets and auctioned it on eBay. The Canada Border Services Agency employee even had the gumption to have the laptops, Palm Pilots and other gizmos delivered to her office, which caused raised eyebrows among her officemates.