Serious shill bidding going on here...

[Snowman]

I found a remarkable shill bidding operation yesterday. This eBay seller (aj_wag) had a card on auction I was interested in, but I noticed the current bid price was already quite a bit higher than the market value on it, still with over 24 hours left to go. It seemed rather odd to me, so I looked into the bid history of the card and clicked on the highest bidder and this is what I found.

https://www.ebay.com/bmgt/ViewBidder...p2471758.m4792

Bidder: y***y (357)
Feedback: 81% Positive
Total bids: 547
Items bid on: 220
Bid activity with this seller: 98% !!!
Bid retractions (12 months): 217 !!!

Note the seller's current listings page can be found here:
https://www.ebay.com/sch/aj_wag/m.html

I reported the listing as having been bid on by a shill bidding account, and the following day I noticed that the listing had been taken down. However, I also reported his other listings which were also being shill bid, but those listings remained up and most ended yesterday and today (way to go eBay).

Then I looked at the seller's feedback and discovered that someone mentioned in a negative comment that this seller had harassed and bullied him from another eBay account, which he names as being 'rywag5421'. This other eBay account has the same feedback score as his shill bidding account and is the one he is using to shill bid on all of his auctions. This account is the one that has 98% bid activity across 547 bids on 220 items with the seller in just the last month alone! But it gets worse...

So I started looking into all of his other auctions. This same shill bidding account popped up as the highest bidder or second-highest bidder on all recent auctions for items worth any significant amount of money. This led me down the following rabbit hole...

2019 PANINI KABOOM JA MORANT ROOKIE PSA 10 SSP 72 HOUR AUCTION
https://www.ebay.com/bfl/viewbids/144040886943

This auction ended on 18 May 2021 at 8:00:23pm PDT
Notice the timestamps of his shill bidding account's activity. This is where it starts to get strange.

The high bidder on May 17th was $4050. Then at 5:58am on the 18th, another legitimate buyer outbids him with a currently unknown bid amount, bumping the price to $4100. An hour later, the shill bids start coming in. First he bumps it up to $4175, still gets outbid by the real bidder, then he incrementally increases his bids until he outbids the other bidder at 7:05am. Then, at 8:00:22pm PDT (which is ONE SECOND before the auction ends!!!) he retracts his last bid, which kicks it back to the other bidder, causing them to win the auction with their max bid amount! How is this even possible??? This isn't just shill bidding an item up to some reserve price that he wants it to sell for. This is him actively increase his shill bid amounts in order to find what the other bidder's max bid amount is, and then retracting that last bid at literally the last second so that the other buyer wins with their max bid!

And he does this over and over again on multiple listings. Same thing each time. Shill bids them up above their maximum bid amount, then retracts at the last second (unless he doesn't get a fish on, then he just lets his shill bid win the auction and relists it). Sometimes his shill bids come in with seconds to go, then the retraction takes place 4 seconds later, again, with 1 second remaining in the auction! ONE SECOND! Who would do that? Seems like something only an automated system would do. But how? How does eBay allow this to happen? I certainly don't have the option to retract a bid with 1 second remaining. How is he even able to do this?

Here's another one where he retracts a shill bid with 9 seconds to go after it matches the winning bidder's bid amount, then with 4 seconds remaining he bumps them back up:
https://www.ebay.com/bfl/viewbids/144135531500

And another: same thing, but this one retracted with ZERO SECONDS REMAINING!
https://www.ebay.com/bfl/viewbids/144064851261

And another: same thing, but this one retracted with one second remaining.
https://www.ebay.com/bfl/viewbids/144061042216

And another: again with ZERO SECONDS REMAINING!
https://www.ebay.com/bfl/viewbids/144073875706

And another: this one retracted with two seconds remaining.
https://www.ebay.com/bfl/viewbids/144083313912

Here he is just fake buying his own card trying to create false comps (which he also repeats multiple times)
https://www.ebay.com/itm/144102071581

Here's a crazy one where the ***(357) account goes back and forth with another fishy-looking account ***(249). The (249) bidder places a bid, then the shill account comes in and tops it. Then the shill bid gets 'canceled' (not retracted), making the other account the highest bidder, but then THAT account retracts too, and then the shill bid retracts it's 2nd highest bid again making the other account the winner in the end lol. But that other account has 277 retracted bids over the past 12 months! WTF? 277!??

HOLY S#!T!!! As I'm going through his sold listings, I just now discovered that this is the same seller who sold that COUNTERFEIT Ty Cobb T206 card in the PSA slab that someone posted about earlier!
https://www.ebay.com/itm/144084509168

This dude needs a visit from law enforcement.

Here's what I don't get though. How is it that this 'rywag5421' shill bidding account is still active? This account "wins" countless auctions from 'aj_wag' yet presumably never pays. It has 81% positive feedback (this bears repeating... EIGHTY-ONE PERCENT!), has somehow been able to retract 217 bids in the past year (TWO HUNDRED AND SEVENTEEN!), all of which were with 'aj_wag' listings, and it has a 98% bid activity with the 'aj_wag' account (NINETY-EIGHT PERCENT!). How incompetent are the data scientists at eBay that they can't prevent/catch this stuff with just some basic coding skills? I could fix their entire shill bidding problem in one week if I were working there. And I know they hire people like me because their recruiters won't stop bugging me to come work there (sorry eBay, not happening). Apparently, they just don't care enough to want to fix it.

There's also some other strange stuff going on. Another bidder on one of his Kobe cards is listed as 'z***n (12)'. When you click on this account, it says 0% bids with this same seller, but this account retracted the highest bid on his Kobe card in a similar manner to his shill bid cancellations. But this account has 151 retracted bids over the past 12 months across random accounts despite only having a feedback score of 12. It almost looks as if it's a shill bid for hire account. I've seen something similar on a few of his other listings too. I'm wondering what sort of underground operations are set up out there now. It seems like someone has automated shill bidding operations set up that enable bid cancellations with literally 1 and 0 seconds remaining, and has separate accounts set up that shill bid on all sorts of different accounts and later retract those bids, never (or rarely) actually winning anything.

[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.

[Johnny630]

Great Research! Sadly the bottom line is ebay doesn't care about this and neither to most buyers.

This industry has always been the wild wild west, sadly pretty much anything goes, you have to go your own way.

[mrreality68]

Originally Posted by Johnny630

Great Research but the bottom line is ebay doesn't care about this and neither to most buyers.

This industry has always been the wild wild west, sadly pretty much anything goes, you have to go your own way.

I do not know how you guys found this and the research done but great job and great heads up

[ALBB]

thats just awful, and so obvious ..how could they not see that !

[FrankWakefield]

Thank you, Snowman, for setting this out for us. Tenacious research.

eBay makes a bit more money when a listing sells for a bit more...

Whatever is going on, it is beyond something for a local law enforcement. It's something for the FBI.

Maybe someone buys a low price item just to get a read on who the seller is, and where he is.

[Mark17]

Originally Posted by Snowman

And he does this over and over again on multiple listings. Same thing each time. Shill bids them up above their maximum bid amount, then retracts at the last second (unless he doesn't get a fish on, then he just lets his shill bid win the auction and relists it). Sometimes his shill bids come in with seconds to go, then the retraction takes place 4 seconds later, again, with 1 second remaining in the auction! ONE SECOND! Who would do that? Seems like something only an automated system would do. But how? How does eBay allow this to happen? I certainly don't have the option to retract a bid with 1 second remaining. How is he even able to do this?

I don't retract bids, but isn't it just a request to the seller, and if he approves, the retraction goes through? In this case the bidder and seller are a team, so maybe the seller clicks on the "bid retraction approved" button (whatever it's called,) at the last second. I agree, that's cutting it unnecessarily close.

[jfkheat]

Originally Posted by Mark17

I don't retract bids, but isn't it just a request to the seller, and if he approves, the retraction goes through? In this case the bidder and seller are a team, so maybe the seller clicks on the "bid retraction approved" button (whatever it's called,) at the last second. I agree, that's cutting it unnecessarily close.

The seller doesn't have to approve a bid retraction.

[MikeGarcia]

..

Originally Posted by jfkheat

The seller doesn't have to approve a bid retraction.

..

" timing is also important when retracting a bid:

If there are 12 hours or more left before the listing ends, all of your bids can be retracted
If the listing is ending in less than 12 hours, you can retract your most recent bid if it's been less than an hour since you placed it

Any other bids can't be retracted, but you can still contact the seller to see if they'll agree to cancel a bid for you. Remember, the seller isn’t obligated to cancel the bid so they may not agree."

...there appears to be a "12-hour rule " ??

..

[rjackson44]

Feebay doesnt care crazy nice work

[D. Bergin]

Originally Posted by MikeGarcia

..


..

" timing is also important when retracting a bid:

If there are 12 hours or more left before the listing ends, all of your bids can be retracted

If the listing is ending in less than 12 hours, you can retract your most recent bid if it's been less than an hour since you placed it

Any other bids can't be retracted, but you can still contact the seller to see if they'll agree to cancel a bid for you. Remember, the seller isn’t obligated to cancel the bid so they may not agree."

...there appears to be a "12-hour rule " ??

..

The bolded part. I don't remember ever seeing that as part of Ebay's rules before. I've heard of the, if there are more then 12 hours left, you can retract. If there's less, you need to try and get the seller to cancel........which does not show up as a retraction.

So this essentially allows someone to either shill an auction, or sabotage an auction to their hearts content, in the final hour........which is when most relevant bidding goes on to begin with.

Utter madness from Ebay.

Get rid of bid retractions (or at least tamp them down quite a bit), and most bid shilling and auction interference goes away overnight. It's real f*#king simple.

The big sellers should be pressuring Ebay to make this change.

[Flintboy]

Been on eBay over 20 years and have never retracted a bid that I can remember.

[D. Bergin]

Originally Posted by Flintboy

Been on eBay over 20 years and have never retracted a bid that I can remember.

I think I've retracted 1 or 2 bids over the years because I forgot to put in a decimal point before entering the bid on the mobile app, and then I immediately inputted the correct amount.

[Snowman]

I am encouraged to report that both accounts listed above are no longer registered users on eBay.

[MattyC]

Great work, Snowman.

[mrreality68]

Originally Posted by MattyC

Great work, Snowman.

+1 agree

[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!