eBay sellers nailed for inflating bids

Mara Kent (Thomas Cooley) reports that eight sellers on the eBay auction site have been ordered to pay $90,000 in restitution and fines for making phony bids to inflate sale prices.  Some 120 people will share in the recoveries, according to the New York Attorney General’s office.

The biggest offenders were sellers of automobiles and art.  In one case, an art auction house and its former employees routinely bid on each others’ goods—some 1,100 items over five years—to drive the price higher.