And rightly so. They recognize that a marketplace rife with scam artists and cheats is not good for business. It undermines users' confidence in eBay, and thus their bottom line. I was taken several years ago on eBay for a sizable chunk of money. To EBay's credit, they worked closely with the FBI to gather evidence against and prosecute the miscreant, who at that time was a lawyer, and the others in his ring. In the end, I got my money back, the guy pled guilty and was dis-barred. That was a success story. But for every story like that, there are probably many, many cases of shill bidding that go undetected and unprosecuted.