Fraud Complaints Spur EBay to Suspend Seller, Call Police

Online auctioneer EBay Inc. said Tuesday that it suspended a member’s privileges and contacted police after bidders on his merchandise said they were defrauded.

EBay says that fraud is relatively rare on its Web site--the company gets complaints involving about one in 25,000 transactions. With 4.2 million items on sale Tuesday in 4,300 categories, that works out to about 168 cases of fraud, based on the average.

EBay contacted police in Van Nuys and the U.S. Postal Service’s fraud department earlier this month after winning bidders complained they had not received the merchandise from the man, company spokesman Kevin Pursglove said Tuesday.

Pursglove would not identify the man, who had several accounts at EBay that generally had received positive reviews. The San Jose firm asks bidders to rank the service they received from anyone auctioning an item to help establish a reputation for that person.

EBay said its own investigation also discovered that the man, who was based in the Van Nuys area, had been bidding on his own merchandise to drive up the price, Pursglove said. “That’s generally grounds for immediate suspension,” he said.

Some EBay buyers complained that after they paid they either received nothing or something they had not ordered.