July 2010
Paul Barrett has been sentenced to 250 hours of community service and made to pay £5000 for his ebay scheme of bidding on his own items to increase the price.
Paul a mini bus hire manager was initially investigated after North Yorkshire Trading Standards received a complaint that he had advertised a vehicle on ebay with a false low mileage. On investigation they had found that Barrett actually had two ebay accounts. One of them used for selling goods, the others used to make fake bids on his items to increase the bid.
Using his online aliases to boost sale prices Paul sold two Mercedes vehicles, a Land Rover, a cash till, a refrigerated display unit, a pasty warmer, 3 mobiles and a Camera.
This practice known as shill bidding is fairly common with 14% of respondents in an office of fair trading survey expressing they believed it had happened to them. Ebay spend £6 Million GBP per year in an attempt to control the problem.
Barrett was found to have breached Business Protection from Misleading Marketing Regulations 2008 and the Consumer Protection from Unfair trading Regulations 2008. Laws introduced in the UK to clamp down on internet fraud. Had Barrett been convicted under the fraud act his sentence could have been even more serious.
The judge told Barrett that he only escaped prison because of the relatively small amount of money involved and his previous clean record.
Ebay are said to be pleased with the result and the sentence. At last UK authorities are taking ebay fraud seriously.
Rightly or Wrongly, anyone aware of the UK justice system will be able to reel off dozens of examples of people commiting far more serious crimes and getting away with lighter sentences. Offences such as supply of class A or violence.
It is good to see at last UK Justice is starting to tackle online fraud, but make no mistake they have made an example of Paul Barrett in order to send out a strong message.
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