An Open Letter to Bill Mastro

[calvindog]

Originally Posted by jcmtiger

I won several auction items in Mastro auctions and never put a max bid for the items. I guess I'm one of the few that was never shilled. I'm serious about this, never had a problem with shill bidding. This post does not address any items that were not real or accurately described.

Joe

Joe, respectfully, you couldn't be more wrong. What if you were bidding against someone, topping each other, and later you found out it was Bill Mastro from his office computer? Or what if you were bidding a price you felt comfortable with based on prior sales -- only to find out later that Bill and Doug ran up those earlier prices? You have no idea if you've never been affected by shill bidding, you couldn't possibly know with certainty that you have not unless you've seen all of his bidding records -- the ones that he didn't destroy.

I'm honestly stunned at how badly people want to convince themselves that Mastro didn't rip them off, even when he admitted under oath in court that for many years his auctions were rigged.