A decade ago, Nilton Rossoni's export business tanked along with the Brazilian economy. Ever the entrepreneur, Rossoni would soon concoct a brilliant cash-making scheme on eBay.

The former Sunny Isles Beach resident ``sold'' everything from airline tickets to DVD collections to rotisserie grills on the Internet auction site. But in reality, it was all a scam. He never shipped a thing to thousands of winning bidders who had paid him.

The illegal take: about $717,000 from more than 5,500 eBay transactions, using at least 260 different auction accounts, federal prosecutors say.

Rossoni, 50, was sentenced in West Palm Beach federal court Tuesday to 5 ½ years in prison after pleading guilty to mail-fraud conspiracy. He had gained a national reputation among authorities as eBay's maestro of fraud.

more.. link to news article

And here I thought that name had been reserved for JD.

If its true that he ran 5,500 phoney sales from 260 false accounts that's a hell of a lot of cons with each ID.I know ebay will trot out the "we are only a venue" excuse bud there must have been alsrm bells ringing somewhere.

why should ebay be held responsible for his actions?

mpearson wrote (View Post): › why should ebay be held responsible for his actions?

Because it doesn't take a genius to be able to track users by their IP address. So unless this guy created each ID from a different computer, eBay should have been able to track down the multiple of IDs once things started going bad.

But eBay has blown the "just a venue" claim when they started telling sellers how they had to run their business, what payment methods they had to accept, etc. A "venue" would simply collect the rents and stay out of everyone's business.

Most probably the seller used proxy ip address.Also ebay allow large number of seller accounts from a single ip as long as there is no complaints as it look good on their books.

5 1/2 years? Really? That's it for almost a million bucks stolen?

So unless this guy created each ID from a different computer, eBay should have been able to track down the multiple of IDs once things started going bad.

He could have done it using proxy IP's, all from the same computer.

xbaystores wrote (View Post): › 5 1/2 years? Really? That's it for almost a million bucks stolen?

He/they must have been Powersellers.

surplusdealdude wrote (View Post): › So unless this guy created each ID from a different computer, eBay should have been able to track down the multiple of IDs once things started going bad. He could have done it using proxy IP's, all from the same computer.

Most likely - its a simple solution. Unless there is a way to know all the phony IPs, is will be very difficult for a site to track this down. This guy had 240 id's?

This guy had 240 id's?

That's, what, about $30,000 per ID? He could have done one of those a day and the old ebay system wouldn't have been able to react fast enough to stop him.

Might be more difficult, if not impossible, now.