Silicon Valley prosecutors have latched onto a novel way to go after Internet auction scams that’s straight out of the Old West.
Using an obscure 1872 law originally intended to prosecute shady horse traders, the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office has charged a 38-year-old Mountain View, Calif., man with running a “mock auction” after he allegedly collected money from bidders on the eBay auction site in exchange for electronics goods he only rarely delivered.
The alleged victims stretched from the United States to Europe and Asia.
“This law goes back to the Old West, to the days of covered wagons and gunslingers,” said Deputy District Attorney Frank Berry.
But Berry said the frontier-days statute fits nicely with his case against auctioneer Jonathan You, even if the law had been forgotten until a new kind of auctions became popular with the growth of the Internet.
Prosecutors brought the charges against You after police received numerous complaints in the past year from Web surfers who claimed he didn’t deliver what he had promised.
According to Berry, You used three different business names to auction items priced under $200, usually computer components such as hard drives or memory chips. Once he got the money from the winning bidder, he would deliver the goods late, send an inferior item or not produce anything at all.
Berry estimates You misled about 300 people around the world. “We believe he would auction first, then try to find the goods later,” he said.
Occasionally, You would come through with deliveries, but prosecutors say that was rare.
You’s defense attorney says authorities’ estimates of the number of victims are exaggerated.
“He’s more of a bad businessman than a criminal,” says You’s lawyer, Mark Arnold. “Because of poor business practices, he got behind an eight ball and wasn’t able to fulfill all his obligations. But most of his customers were satisfied.”
Arnold says that after You auctioned the items on eBay, he would discover that prices had gone up drastically because of fluctuations in the computer business.
But authorities note You had been warned. In fact, he was charged with grand theft earlier this year on similar allegations.