Man Gets 4 Years In Prison For Inflating EBay Auctions

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A man accused of inflating bids in hundreds of Internet art auctions, including the sale of a phony Richard Diebenkorn painting on EBay, was sentenced Wednesday to almost four years in prison.

Kenneth Fetterman, 36, of Placerville (El Dorado County) was ordered by U. S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton in Sacramento to serve 46 months in prison and pay $94,682 in restitution.

According to authorities, Fetterman participated in a fraud that used dozens of fake identities to inflate bids for paintings listed on EBay by him and two co-defendants, Kenneth Walton, 36, a former attorney from Sacramento, and Scott Beach, 33, of Lakewood, Colo. The two already pleaded guilty in the case.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/05/26/BAG0F6RSP41.DTL

Oh yeah. Zero. I forgot.

Is this an offense that really is worthy of 4 years in prison?

I've been to e-bay. You don't have to bid on anything. You choose to bid on something.

Many times you know that people are inflating the bids, so you walk away. There will be another plastic Mickey Mouse Sippy Cup on there tomorrow.

I have to think this is a case of fools being parted with money.

No one is telling people to make bids at inflated prices. No one's forcing anyone to buy anything.

...they all have a plant in there to drive up bids.:wtf:

if he had done that in the stock market? Fraud is fraud. I'd keel-haul him for that. The durn galute.

It's one thing to snipe, but another to do so solely for price jacking.