HAHA Man gets a 3k fine and community service for fake EBAY Auctions ..serves the dickhead right
 

A man has been fined £3,000 and ordered to carry out 250 hours community service after fixing an online auction on eBay.

Paul Barrett, 39 and from County Durham, became the first person to be convicted of shill bidding in April.

That's when online sellers bid on their own items to artificially bump up the price or get friends and family to do it for them.

Barrett was sentenced after admitting 10 counts at Bradford Crown Court.

The minibus hire firm boss pleaded guilty after an investigation by North Yorkshire Trading Standards found he had bid against himself on several items, including a pie and pasty warmer on sale for £127.

Mr Barrett told the court that he didn't realise the practice was against the law.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/hi/te...0/10508913.stm

wow... you know how rampant that is on ebay...

i would like to see this happen in the US...




.

That would be awesome!!


But the publicity of it may turn people off to Ebay.

yeah I know a lot of people do it, when im bidding on something Ill only go to a price which I think the item is worth or if I can make a profit from reselling it, then stop no matter how much I want it

Now he will have to come up with 'better' evil plans to come up with the fine money :)

what i find funny is he is the boss of a minivan company and he has to do stupid things like that ..the mind boggles

Ebay is an addictive thing though. My old boss used to really buy into the "you've just won!!!" aspect of the auctions and buy all sorts of stupid things.

He probably just thought he had come up with a good way to inflate prices without realising he could get fucked by them for doing it.

Does Ebay attempt to track this and report it? How do you know it happens a lot?

I can believe it would, just curious if and what Ebay does try to counter this..

from the report

'Happens regularly'

Critics of eBay say shill bidding is a widespread problem on the site.

eBay spokesperson Vanessa Canzenni denies that not enough is being done to prevent it.

She said: "We spend £6 million every year to try and stop shill bidding from happening.
Paul Barrett Paul Barrett claimed he was not aware he was acting illegally by shill bidding

"The fact that we're the number one e-commerce site proves that customers can buy and sell with confidence."

She also claims eBay is able to spot when shill bidding is happening, although wouldn't provide any details about how that's possible.

She added: "We have leading technology that enables us to detect when people are trying to do this."

How do you catch onlie auction cheats

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/10494724.stm

Dr Gerding said: "In order to deter shill bidding, the website should charge a fee which is a percentage of the difference between the reserve price and the final price at which the item was sold."

The website that Barrett targeted - eBay - said it invests more than £6m each year in technology to prevent and detect shill bidding.

Vanessa Canzini, eBay's head of corporate communications in Europe, said: "This investment in state-of-the-art technology acts as a strong deterrent to the small minority who attempt to use our site inappropriately, but more than this, it helps us to work with law enforcement agencies to secure successful prosecutions if anyone decides to try their luck."

I imagine their mystical detection software is just an ip address and cookie checker. It isn't really in their interest financially to stop it though as they get the % commission on the sale price.

so fucking lame.... hard earned tax dollars at work. man that guy was a criminal!

He got the fine for clocking his minivan not for the auctions.