I was defrauded on eBay but couldn't see how many others got caught like me because eBay will not search one seller's completed sales. How many sales are still pending, then? Can't tell because eBay removed them (makes sense, they're all frauds). Boy, let's see the flood of negative feedback. Can't. There's plenty of outrage at http://ebayscammer.notlong.com but eBay froze the feedback forum after 9 negatives. C''mon guys, how many other users were deprived of their privilege to post negative feedback?

eBay hides its fraud from the people who need to know it most: their users and potential future victims.

Using proprietary methods which would endanger national security if disclosed I tracked down everyone victimized by auction_price_for_you and posted a list to the Web.

http://ebayvictims.notlong.com lists 294 transactions worth over $130,000. Every sale is a hot link -- satisfy yourself that every sale was posted by user "auction_price_for_you" before eBay takes them off their servers. Treat yourself to a complete snapshot of a single eBay fraud event.

Let's talk detection and prevention.

Explain this to me again. A guy who had 23 sales in May, 11 in April suddenly does 294 transactions in less than 2 weeks? Suddenly he finds over $100,000 in capital to purchase merchandise? These are the stats for the transactions I have publicly listed. They are completed sales of fictitious items listed up to 10 at a time in multi-item, Buy-It-Now sales. The totals listed are higher still than my figures for sales completed.

Since any credit card company could detect the anomalous usage pattern, eBay could also. But eBay has chosen not to similarly supervise its own site traffic. Get it while it lasts, folks, it's easy. Let your victims use PayPal. Then you get your hundred grand and eBay compensates your victims. A billion dollars in annual profits (on 2005 annual revenues of 4.5 billion) can handle 10,000 "transaction loss" incidents like this. Compensation rates hover around 0.3% -- of what? transactions, revenues or profits? No matter, no concern with the human costs, with the community. Compensating fraud victims is a rounding error.

Let's talk about community and the community-based Website Pierre Omidyar created.

Every user listed on http://ebayvictims.notlong.com is a hot link. Could you click on a few for me and tell them about the fraud victims' support page? I can't, because eBay freezes their CONTACT USER service at 10 messages/day. OK, I'll settle for 80 chars to announce the Website to other victims when I leave feedback on Mom's TV that never came. Oh crap, that's frozen too, isn't it?

eBay is a Web 1.0 company in a Web 2.0 world. Someone break the news to Pierre. http://www.omidyar.net/whatshot/