SHILL BIDDING SHOULD BE ILLEGAL! PLEASE HELP!

[kaos2015]

I want to report a member on behalf of my friend who was been trying to buy an item but the seller seems to be a scammer by driving up the prices with fake accounts. Maybe we are wrong and maybe we are not but-  it looks like a fishy and it smells like a fishy so it almost has to be fishy!

Item number: 181468915740

ITEM NUMBER 181 468 915 740 ( this is only one example- nearly every current listing has 2 bidders driving up prices on the sellers items and going through all the items in the feedback history the 2 bidders are constantly bidding)

They are using fake accounts to drive up the price and that is illegal!!!!! I think it is called shill bidding.

We have checked the sellers items sold, the number of bidders and all the feedback left and it DOES NOT MAKE SENSE!!!!

And the strange thing is these 2 bidders who have bid thousands of times on her items in 30 days cant be found in her feedback yet they are bidding large amounts but never seem to win or leave feedback. That is strange.

SELLER ID godblessmaria

We have gone through all the current listings and a lot of recent listings and it is the SAME BIDDERS ALWAYS DRIVING UP THE PRICES!!!

Currently 1 person bidding is b***0 (4) with 4 feedback.

In the last 30 days it says they have made 2282 bids on 451 items and 90% of the bid activity is with godblessmaria.

That DOES NOT MAKE SENSE that someone has made 2282 bids in ONE MONTH and only has a feedback of 4??????? They have made 2053 bids on godblessmaria listings and has only 4 feedback in one month?

ANOTHER bidder is g***i (48) with 48 feedback. In 30 days they have made 1493 bids on 426 items, 99% of them with godblessmaria. And only have a feedback of 48?????

This is shill bidding and is illegal and they are STEALING from other Ebay bidders by driving the prices up!!!

And they are not bidding small amount but large amounts!!!!!! Sometimes over $200

What we think they are doing is driving up the prices to MASSIVE amounts and then not completing the checkout- they are just paying the 10% fees and then giving second chance offers hence recovering the costs for the FVF transactions they never complete and STILL making sales with 'second chance offers'.

Is there anyway Ebay and Paypal can check that the sales made on Ebay through the possible fake bidders are actually getting completed through Paypal?

How is it that 2 people have made 3775 bids on ONE SELLER in ONE MONTH with a total feedback of only 52 between them???

THAT DOES NOT MAKE SENSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Why is this allowed to happen?

My friend wants to bid but it is plain to see that godblessmaria has people driving up prices with THOUSANDS of bids that never win!!!!!!!!

Please tell me what is going on! And please correct us if we are wrong

Thank you.

[cq_tech]

Yes chooks, that person was indeed her shill bidder with 4 feedbacks, also now NARU. All that feedback for her other ID makes it pretty hard to believe her claims that she didn't know she was doing anything wrong. I just can't believe the cheek of this woman!

[imastawka]

Bumping.

She's still selling!! 

[i-love-my-sheep]

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@imastawka wrote:

Bumping.

She's still selling!! 

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Yep, she is. I reported her account the other day, so I guess we just have to wait and see. I think from memory it took a bit over a week to get her other accounts NARU'd. I made a point of asking them to check her feedback to see all but 3 are from one of her now closed ID's. I got a slightly different reply to my last few reports, so we'll see. They did mention they would check the feedback on that account.

I looked at some of the sold listings on this current account and there was shilling going on there too.....but only between one of her own accounts and the 4 feedback bidder. I would assume that was a feedback building exercise. Not sure why she would get the bidding up to over $300 just to build feedback, but that's how it looked.

[thecatspjs]

Chooks have you reported it to the police?

Worth doing given the level of $$$ involved.

[i-love-my-sheep]

No, I haven't. I guess they could find her through her B&M gallery.....

[thecatspjs]

The police have easy access to all the details that eBay has on the seller and their bidders.  My understanding is that they can actually log in to investigate.

Given the level of fraud that is being committed here, and the action that has been taken by eBay to date, I think it would be most appropriate given the information you have gathered.

I post this in hope that eBay reported the NARU seller that has scammed $$$ thousands themselves, as shilling is illegal.

[go-tazz]

This is typical eBay as they don't consider this account as a shill account as all their listings are BIN's and will

make them money,(so their reluctant in shutting them down).

Their first reply back was that they had taken action on the account,but they stated the action was because of

their shill bidding,(which is wrong off course as they where the shiller),

So I've sent another message to try and make it clearer as below,(it's basically the same as the first message

but this way they can't confuse the ID's).

If you check the feedback for others you will see that Member id: *** was one of the shill bidders for these:

Member id: **** and Member id ****

They have even used the same profile picture as the Member id: *** account.

They should have been NARU'd when those accounts and their other shillers where shut down.

They need to be NARU'd,the same as their other accounts where shut down.

[i-love-my-sheep]

She started some auctions today, the last one being 4 minutes ago (10 so far). Will be interesting to see if any low feedback 'buyers' start bidding.

[i-love-my-sheep]

She's still listing as I type it seems. I just refreshed her auctions and there is now 11. I have 3 days off now and some are listed for 3 days, so I'll be keeping a close eye on them.

[retailtherapist_8]

I havent been on these boards for a long time and came across this thread...gotta say...WELL DONE...to all who participated in reporting & exposing this Seller. Fabulous to see the community pulling together.

 Lets hope ebay are watching her and shut her down permanently.