posted 05-25-2004 07:49 AM               

"Success of the internet auction site has made it prey to criminals and left it facing legal action from clients.

IT BILLS itself as the “world’s biggest marketplace” but the online auction house eBay has become for some a virtual car boot sale of stolen, counterfeit and forged goods.

The success of eBay, which has 94.9 million users, 9 million of whom are registered in the United Kingdom, has effectively breathed new life into old-fashioned fraud and provides fertile ground for the technologically savvy criminal.

Although eBay describes itself as a “venue” much like a billboard and emphasises on its web pages that buyers and sellers alike trade on the site at their own risk, many consumers and businesses feel that the site could and should do more to protect them from fraud.

Now The Times has learnt that the company is facing a group action from disgruntled customers who were defrauded using the site.

In addition, 250 of the world’s best-known footballers are due to announce that they will stop signing merchandise for autograph hunters because their forged signatures are ending up on eBay and similar internet auction sites. The FBI has suggested that between 50 per cent and 90 per cent of the signatures being sold on the internet are forged.

“Intelligence would suggest that the internet, particularly eBay, is increasingly being used as a medium for disposing of stolen property,” said Steve Green, Chief Constable of Nottinghamshire police.

The Bristol law firm Bevans is advising a number of clients about the possibility of legal action against eBay. The firm claims that one individual was duped out of thousands of pounds when he made a transaction to a seller on a site that had been hacked into by a fraudster. Although the seller complained to eBay about the incident, he claims that eBay failed to close the site.

James Taylor, a solicitor at Bevans, said of eBay: “Its terms and conditions are at pains to state that its role is merely facilitative, and contain a number of exclusion clauses which attempt to avoid all responsibility for losses arising out of trading on eBay.

“We are investigating whether eBay have taken sufficient steps to ensure that their service is as secure as possible.”

EBay successfully defended a similar action in America, in which a man tried to sue the company after he had unwittingly bought fake memorabilia from the site. Auction fraud accounts for 46 per cent of all fraud on the net, say the FBI says.

Victims of crime are increasingly logging on to the site to recover goods that have been stolen from them. A fraudster selling thousands of stolen wheel trims on the site was uncovered when a man whose own wheel trims had disappeared from his car spotted them on the site. On another occasion police in Torquay arrested a couple who were attempting to sell £12,000 of stolen camcorders on auction sites including eBay.

One woman illegally tried to sell a housing association flat on the site. Bids for the one-bedroom flat had allegedly reached £11,100 by the time the sale was withdrawn.

A spokesman for Manchester United said that little had been done about what they say are patently forged memorabilia on the site and that “even the authentication certificates are fake”.

While in many parts of the country the organisers of car boot sales or flea markets must register with trading standards officers recording all details of sellers taking part, no such law applies to the internet.

A spokesman for itsmissing.com, a site which helps to trace stolen goods on the internet, said: “Basically eBay is a boot sale on the web which means that there is pretty much no checking done on the products being sold there.

“We have contacted eBay on a number of occasions and said they need to look at these issues but all we get back is a standard letter saying, ‘we will deal with it’. They need to tell people the risks of buying on the internet and stop all this ‘eBay is safe’ business.”

A spokesman for the the Art Loss Register and Trace, an independent body that specialises in tracking down stolen art and antiques, said that reselling stolen goods on the internet had become rampant.

“We are finding an increasing proportion of our recovery on the internet and sold both on dealer sites and electronic auction sites such as eBay.

“The only way they (eBay) can deal with this in the long term is if they are going to stimulate reputable trade is to check what is being sold.”

A spokeswoman for eBay said the company employed 800 people to combat fraud on the site.

“With over 25 million items up for sale worldwide at any one time and 3½ million new listings every single day, eBay obviously cannot vet every item that is listed on the site.We have several fraud protection programmes.