By Lester Haines for The
Register.
This story has been reproduced with permission.
The New York state attorney general's office said Ezra Dweck of
EMC Group and his employees made over 232,000 bids on auctions in
the company's Jewellery by Ezra eBay store. The store regularly
held no-reserve auctions, but Dweck "ensured his employees knew of
which auctions to bid at along with a predetermined price".
In around a year, these bids totalled some $5m, the attorney
general's office claimed. Attorney general Andrew Cuomo said: "This
scam highlights the growing vulnerability of online auction
shoppers. Consumers should not have to surf with sharks."
Dweck and EMH deny the claims, and a lawyer for the company said
it had agreed to cough up the cash "only to avoid an interminable,
costly battle with the AG's office". He explained: "EMH and Mr
Dweck did not intentionally encourage any fraudulent bidding. A
buyback program, which was vetted by two attorneys, was created to
give winning bidders an incentive to sell back to EMH certain
items."
The attorney general's office was alerted to the alleged scam by
eBay, which "helped in the investigation over several months". eBay
spokeswoman Nichola Sharpe said: "We do not tolerate criminal
activity and proactively assist law enforcement to prosecute any
individual who may try to defraud our users."
Cuomo's office added that Dweck and EMH Group have also been
"banned from the online auction industry for four years under the
terms of the settlement agreed to by the parties".
© The Register
2007
