Serious shill bidding going on here...

[chalupacollects]

Originally Posted by Snowman

For those of you who follow along with some of the BODA research stuff, it is perhaps worth pointing out that the shill bidding account name is 'rywag5421', yet these are some of the masked buyer IDs that eBay uses for his bids/purchases. Notice any patterns? I do. Also, notice that it's not the same masked ID each time? Notice the random and non-random elements? Note that these all link to the same user profile.
y***y (357)
6***r (357)
8***0 (357)
r***g (357)
1***4 (357)
5***1 (357)
3***w (357)
1***g (357)
a***6 (357)
5***9 (357)
4***w (357)
0***4 (357)
1***1 (357)
4***a (357)
4***y (357)
0***1 (357)
r***y (357)
y***9 (357)
1***0 (357)
5***8 (357)
8***w (357)
5***2 (357)
3***a (357)
g***4 (357)
g***2 (357)
9***1 (357)
1***y (357)

This is one of the main issues I have with some of the BODA work. They call people out because a card was purchased by some specific masked ID (say 'm***1' for example). But that masked ID could literally correspond to millions of eBay users, and likely to at least tens of thousands of users who purchase sports cards. Also, every purchase made by the same user will show a different masked ID. So you can't just trace back these purchases to certain people just because you found the same masked ID on some random purchase as you did on another one.

You can however match up feedback totals with masked ID's and be reasonable sure it is the same user that BODA points out.

Nice work on getting this scammer removed!