RSS
Twitter
People Arrested For Shill Bidding On eBay
from the they're-after-you dept
I've heard plenty of people talk about helping friends out on their eBay auctions by "bidding something up". Apparently, doing so is considered wire fraud and can get you five years in jail - so perhaps it's worth a second thought. Of course, in this case, the folks involved were caught rigging nearly 500 auctions. What I still don't understand is how they caught them. How do you figure out that a certain bid is a "shill" instead of a real bid?
Reader Comments
(Flattened / Threaded)
How they where caught
Sounds as though they were using multiple identities and bidded against themselves. For instance if DonaldDrongo and PaulaPonzii are bidding and they turn out to be the same person (by matching IPs) then you've got fraud.
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
Re: How they where caught
which just goes to show ya':
if you're going to shill bids, shill from behind a NATing internet service provider.
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
Re: How they where caught
Or at least from differnt locations
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
Re: How they where caught
I'm pissed off. I'm trying my best to do everything possible to make money and here is this guy on ebay who I know for a fact that is shill bidding and yet ebay does nothing. Why?
Here is his site http://stores.ebay.com/id=12818542&ssPageName=L2
He is always getting somehow (new registered users) and I know his auction of his jewelry is contradicting itself. He is lying to make it sound so inticing. I sell Jewelry and gems and I know my stuff. He is cheating. How is he doing this, what source. Here he is on day 1 and already selling stuff up to $50.00 and here I am at day 6 and still nothing.
Input would be great. Make me feel sane. What can I do? All I want is traffic to see me. Like everyone else.
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
Re: How they where caught
Hi Annette,It's a shame that your jewelry is not selling as well as you would like. I am,however puzzled at how you can be sure that this guy is shill bidding,without the records that ebay have access to,which presumably show the IP addresses of the bidders.Here I am assuming that you have reported your beliefs to ebay;in which case,I'm afraid there's nothing else you can do.
Regards,Rob
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
Re: Re: How they where caught
I have reported 2 sellers I know were shilling. How is it there are bidders with little or no bidding history,and they all have name's like: Bidder1, Bidder2, Bidder3. On and on. Another thing I noticed, was these people would run up the price, and if they won the item...I would see it re-listed almost immediately. There is a huge scam going on with ebay, and even Bbay has a class action suite for increasing buyers bids without their permission. They just increase the buyers bid if there is a reserve amount the buyer has to automatically place another bid up to a capped amount. Now you tell me that isn't as low as you can go. In musical inst.'s there is a flood of counterfeit guitars from China, about 90% of what's being sold. Talk about unfair competition. I'm about ready to start blowing the whistle big time on these guys.
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
Re: Re: How they where caught
Well this store does not seem to exist anymore as your link is dead, so maybe they were caught.
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
Re: Re: How they where caught
I don't know what the incentive would be for eBay to really make an all out effort to prevent shill bidding. After all, if it's as prevalent as many people seem to think, and if sellers who employ it wouldn't make any money if they did not, then they would stop selling on eBay and eBay would lose profits also. So why would eBay really go all out to try to stop the practice?
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
Re: Re: How they where caught
what is a Nating internet service Provider??
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
Re: Re: Re: How they where caught
Why do you want to know?
It stands for "Network Address Translation"
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
No Subject Given
YOWSA !
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
Ebay Shill Bidders And How To Catch Them
It's really very easy to catch shill bidding in the act. First off if your going to shill bid rule number 1~don't give yourself feedback such as this buyer/seller did.....
">pay close attention to the email addresses
Rule number 2~don't copy and paste. See when you copy and paste you suddenly forget which auction and name that you were under such as this seller/buyer did.....pay close attention to email addresses
Now if you have taken a close look and said, "Gee so the buyer of this auction just has the same name as the sellers email address, that doesn't constitute shill bidding"
If you have said that then go get your sign now! The seller of this auction finally gets it together in the end of her auctions such as this one and finally gets the copy and paste technique down right..... ">decides that email and names should coincide and once again decides that email and names should coincide.
I guess she could claim in a court of law that it was multiple personality disorder. And that she couldn't make up her mind if she wanted to be Lori or Brandy. Make no mistake they are the same person. It is really quite entertaining busting someone though.....;)
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
bidder1
i have been searching ebay for a car for some time now but have been made unsuccesssful by bidder1 8 of 10 items i search has high bids from whoever this person is but the person only has a feedback score of three wich i find highly suspicious cant ebay staff investigate
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
Re: bidder1
Usually this is a private auction - you see bidder 1 bidder 2 etc.
These always raise a red flag for me but are often for items that are adult in nature.
Here is what ebay has to say about it.
http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/private.html
Also that is hilarious about busting the mold lady shill bidding, she is still on there. (HAHA get it? busting the mold)
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
bidding
Ebay knows whom does what. They are intelligent fellas whom design their sellers a way to make their item sell for what it cost normally or very close and sometimes most likely over what it should cost and to the better of any commission. I enjoy the 99 cent bid and the 29.99 shipping cost especially when you make the bid and then all of a sudden here comes several bidders out of the blue right at the end and all with funny names and small numbers of items won or sold. Sometimes a friend will help out and you will see he or she is a power seller and that is how sellers maintain their stores for profit instead of loss. Make sense to have a little help from your friends? If you don't like the bid don't bid or just overbid and you are sure to win. HaHa
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
There is nothing wrong with shilling, some people r trying to make some money on ebay. Everything u get on ebay is probably cheaper than elsewhere and your still saving money. Some powersellers need to make the money so their business can continue, without shilling there will not be many sellers and without sellers u dont get the good deal in the first place So stop acting like babies and just suck it up, and ebay doesnt care for shilling cuz the higher the price the item is sold, the more they make from the final value fee
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
Shill Bidding
Auction laws allow the consignors to bid on their own items. Looks at terms of Christies, Sothebys, etc. Ebay USED to allow it, but when they began charging for reserves, they banned it with an accompanying fear campaign. All of the arrests involving "shill" bidding have actually involved selling counterfeit or stolen merchandise.
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
follow up to my own posting
For those of you who haven't seen it, here is a really interesting story from the Sunday Times on shill bidding including interview of an actual power seller from eBay who says he has done it and also does not believe eBay is going to hassle him about it. Kind of confirms my suspicions of why eBay may sometimes "look the other way".
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
Shill Bidding
Shill bidding is fraud, it deceives a potential buyer watching an item, it enriches those who do it and robs the public of a fair auction. The buyer is usually left holding the bag and it reflects upon all legitimate Ebay users because the public will lose trust in any and all auctions as if they are fixed. Ebay needs to crack the whip they know who these people are, they get the fees from them and turn their backs. Check this guy out on Ebay under the user name porscheahmet. He has been caught not once but twice and they only suspended him for I believe 90 days for committing a felony. I am sure that the dozens who are in contact with the federal authorities because of items they purchased on Ebay are no whee near the worth what they were sold for. I am not talking about a fair profit. I am talking about ripping people off in large amounts.
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
Re: Shill Bidding
well i have and do shill bid! if the price gets to high for you stop bidding stupid. your the fool that keeps bidding sucks to be you.yes that is right ebay only suspends your account for 2weeks for the first 30 days for second and so on. if its a felony why no arrests? cause it keeps the market on ebay going. without it ebay would make half the revenue they report good god people think. dont like it go elsewhere otherwise its buyer beware hahahahaha foools
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
SHILL BIDDING
Stop the foreign people using Ebay to rob Americans by shill bidding, it just may be your inheritance they rip off with their scams. How many of you heard about the Nigeria email scamming of folks who lost millions. Well now they are high tech and from quite a few different countries hiding here in the USA committing their scams on EBAY. They look for a weaknes in the system and take off. EBAY is that system.
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
Re: SHILL BIDDING
Is that not just a little racist? Stop 'The foreign people' ? Well I'm English, live in the UK, use ebay.co.uk, Should ebay stop me? Ebay is world wide, and happy to make a profit for it's services in almost every country around the world. Oh sorry, you must be one of those Americans, who thinks you are the world, that the globe begins and ends at your borders.
Let me guess, you don't mean me do you, you mean non-white foreign people, people that speak a different language to you.
The email scam that originated in Nigeria happened because of a loop hole in Nigerian law. There are dishonest people everywhere, it just so happens that dishonest Nigerians, not Nigerians per say, exploited this loop hole.
Or maybe Americans simply never rip off other Americans?
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
eBay seller PorscheAhmet also know as Ahmet Sandikci......I have all the proff needed for shill bidding on this one, but Fleebay does not care
""Buyers beware as Ahmet Sandikci is under investigation by the FBI, The Department of the Tresury, IRS and more for defrauding customers. DO NOT BUY FROM AHMET SANDIKCI. YOU WILL NEVER SEE A RETURN ON YOUR INVESTMENT. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED " "
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
ebay used to be an honest place to get things we wanted. Now that spear chuckers Ect can get online, its just another place to lose money. tHEY SHOULD HAVE NEVER GAVE 3RD WORLD CONTRIES ELECTRICITY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
Re:
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
Ebay are part of the problom
I had the misfortune of buying what I believed was a car from a private seller on eBay but it turned out to be a dealer who had eBay accounts all over the place and after being conned I managed to connect the accounts to eight other accounts using telephone numbers and different cars he had sold and soon discovered other people were also looking for the same scam artist
In the first instance DO NOT CONTACT eBay as they are particularly keen to hide such activities from the public in an attempt to reassure members that it’s safe on eBay and will hide behind the data protection act if asked for detail needed in order to take action yourself.
DO REMEMBER TO SAVE OR PRINT the pages relating to any wrong doing before eBay removed them and changed the data in order to claim that you were not in fact the winning bidder as happened in my case and don’t be put off perusing eBay when they suddenly start replying to you complaints in a foreign language such as Flemish.
You can be sure eBay collected it fees from the person who conned me and have access to IP Addresses and bank details to stop these people opening a new account so from a commercial perspective they are on the side of the criminals however help is at hand with site such as www.Ebusters.co.uk, www.GoofBay.com which helps monitor and catch these criminals.
If your not convince that eBay are involved in such illegal activities then see http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/24/ebay_shill_lawsuit/ that will maybe change your mind.
Shill bidder are rewarded by eBay and just in case they go too far in pushing the price up then eBay comes to the rescue with second chance offer so get it out your head about eBay helping protect members as they are not the solution when they are part of the problem and remember that the next time you suddenly find you won after all.
One last little tip is to save your time from complaining on eBay forums as you will soon discover such unfriendly topics are weighted to quickly disappear off the bottom of the screen and don’t believe all them cars that went unsold with no reserve at £0.99 with no bids as it’s a clear manipulation of the data by eBay as I have witnessed this myself.
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
eBay is knowingly "aiding and abetting" fraudsters!
Do you think there is a problem with fraud on eBay? Do you think that eBay is doing anything to protect you from such fraud? Do you think that only sellers have problems with eBay? Well, actually, in what will undoubtedly be a counterproductive attempt to improve their "bottom line", greedy eBay is now knowingly "aiding and abetting" shill-bidding fraudsters to prey on everyone buying on eBay. For full details start at: http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?p=6499794#6499794
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
Do not buy from Ahmet Sandikci Arcade Currency Palace unless you want to enter into another Bernard Madoff ponzi scheme. Google his name to see that he is a fraud
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
shill-shocker highway robbery
They now have convinced ebay somehow to reveal a bidders maximum bid on an item with, "no reserve," so that in the last ticking seconds they will greedily up the bid to within pennies of winning bidders maximum. they both come up with this type of practice. this happened to me yesterday. in last 9 seconds a mistery bidder number 9 popped out of nowhere and left me winning the item to within 62 cents of my maximum bid. I now have to pay $34.38 more for my item.
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
PONZI CROOKS FRAUD
A business out of Lauderdale by the Sea Trusted Traditions, Inc. is own by a former federal convict. He goes by the name of John Markis when his real name is John Maragoudakis and a search on the federal bureau of prisons website will confim this. Once a crook always a crook BUYER BEWARE in my opinion this guys preys on the elderly and is a real smooth con artist out to rip off unsuspecting people by selling overgraded currency to the general public. Once a crook always a crook.
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
Re:Ponzi Crooks Fraud
I am not familiar John Maragoudakis or his shady business practices but I take offense to your assuming everyone with a criminal record is a scheming crook. I was convicted of a felony in my early 20s as a result of a road side fight with another man because it was considered road rage. I am now a 35 yr old married man with two beautiful kids, a very respectable job and an annual tax bill that would make most people cry. My point is that you are stereotyping me and assuming my record labels me and that p@##$s me off.
Now quit whinning, shut-up and go cook my fries!
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
Re: Re:Ponzi Crooks Fraud
If you have a guilt complex I cannot help that sir. I am sure you would be the better one to cook the fries since obviously you don't know the difference between fraud and a fight as a prior felon and not once but nummerous times...so you see Mr. Ex-con go count your beans and cook more fries untily ou get it right.
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
Shill bidding on eBay
For anyone interested, a detailed case study of a classic, blatant shill bidder on eBay, and a comment on eBay’s attitude thereto, at http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=24033
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
shill bidding
I have some shill bidding thoughts. I think shill bidding is when a seller sees double bids on his item and get someone to bid a little in order to get to that higher bid.
I don't think friends and family members should be barred from bidding on a persons items and here is why: My grandmother died and left a large collection of Barbie items. 8 Different granddaughters wanted the Barbies. My mom decided it would be a great idea to put them on ebay. We could then all bid on the items we really wanted. We had to pay for them, and then after all the ebay fees were paid she divided the money back amongst us. It was a great idea, kept peace in the family, until of course my mom got suspended because I bid (with my own personal account) from what I'm guessing was the same location. (Is that how i.p. address is determined?) Anyway we didn't do anything dishonest,As a matter of fact we didn't get some of our items. Definitly a good idea that backfired. I also think that if I put something I treasure on Ebay and its not going at the price I think its worth, I think I should be able to buy it back. I wouldn't cancel my bid in order to get fees back, I would pay the fees. Does that make me a criminal?? Please advise.
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
Shill Bidding on eBay
And, some more food for thought …
Shill Bidding on eBay: Case Study #2
Shining some light on the more sophisticated and therefore harder to detect shill bidding activity by many “professional” sellers on eBay auctions
This time a spreadsheet analysis of multiple auctions, from some "professional" sellers from the US and Australia. Needless to say the analysis demonstrates, once again, that, contrary to eBay’s claims, shill bidding by many “professional” sellers is rampant on eBay auctions. The full comment and spreadsheet download links at:
http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=24296
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
ebay does not give a hoot about shill bidding or the consumer
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
EBAY: MONEY vs. INTEGRITY
IN IT'S MOST SIMPLEST FORM, IT'S VERY EASY FOR EBAY TO STOP ALL SHILL BIDDINGS IF THEY REALLY WANTED TO.
EBAY KEEPS A RECORD OF ALL BIDS (THEY HAVE TO). AND LIKE ANY OTHER INVESTIGATION, ONCE THEY SEE A PATTERN WHERE A SELLER IS GETTING THE SAME BUYER AND/OR THE BUYER HAS A RECORD OF ONLY BIDDING FROM THAT SELLER AND NEVER WINNING BIDS FROM THE SELLER, CASE CLOSED. YOUR CRIMINAL HAS BEEN CAUGHT AND THE CRIME HAS BEEN SOLVED.
HOWEVER, EBAY WOULD OF LOSS LOTS OF MONEY IN THEIR YOUNGER DAYS, WHICH THEY KNEW ABOUT SHILL BIDDINGS WAAAY... BEFORE IT WAS EVER INVESTIGATED AND FINALLY BROUGHT TO THE SURFACE. EBAY GETS PAID EITHER WAY SO, WHY MESS UP A GOOD THING? THAT'S THEIR MOTTO!
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
Add Your Comment