The information superhighway is a road with an endless number of off-ramps to shopping centers throughout the world. With nearly the entire planet as a potential customer, the spending power of the vast online community is enormous. E-commerce generates nearly a quarter-trillion dollars in sales for retailers in the United States alone, where it is projected by the market research firm Forrester to reach a staggering $370 billion by 2017.1 There are nearly 3 billion internet users worldwide,2 and these figures are not lost on those looking to make money, least of all the devious con men of the world.
One hardly sees a week pass without finding a bogus solicitation in his e-mail account. Whether it be a Nigerian scam involving money left behind by a heretofore unknown and now deceased distant relative, a nefarious attempt to trick a dupe into giving up a credit card number, or a get-rich-quick business proposal, online scam attempts have become an accepted part of the internet user’s daily life. Little can be done to completely avoid crossing paths with an internet crook except remaining vigilant and adhering to the warning “let the buyer beware.”
The ability to shop online is undeniably changing the way we live. For instance, bookstores are closing all over the country, unable to compete with the internet retail giant Amazon.com. The same is true for record stores, almost single-handedly undone worldwide by the invention of the MP3 and the emergence of Apple’s iTunes. And Blockbuster exists as only a memory of the old days, with video store rentals having been replaced by the likes of Amazon Prime, Netflix, and others.
Still, it’s not necessarily a negative development. Online shopping allows the consumer access to items it once could only dream of finding, never mind at lightning-quick speeds. Whether it’s the newest hot gadget or a one-of-a-kind collectible, you can probably find it for sale online. And one website offers consumers that sort of access and variety on a wider scale than any other: eBay.
eBay, founded in the mid-1990s by Pierre Omidyar, is an online auction site that describes itself as “the world’s online marketplace.” It’s a claim that is hard to refute, with the site boasting nearly 150 million buyers in 2014 shopping from 700 million global listings.3 Shoppers can search for everything from an Aardvark microphone pro-amp to a Zyzz singlet and a mind-boggling array of items in between. The genius of eBay is in the fact that the company itself doesn’t sell anything on its site other than a platform; all of the items for sale are offered as such by private parties who set prices, deliver the products, and conduct most financial transactions on their own (the latter part done through a payment service called PayPal, which, by no coincidence, was acquired by eBay). Items sold on eBay vary in prices from mere pennies to exorbitance, for, say, a Ferrari F12berlinetta ($599,900 or best offer).4
If you are an art lover, a simple eBay search can lead you to amazing finds. Take for instance the D. C. Grose painting Trading on the Plains (circa 1873–75). The painting is described as being in “perfect condition after its restoration and canvas lining by Italian technicians in religious art.” It can be had for just $4,299,999.5 Or perhaps the Dutch Masters are your passion, in which case The Evangelist Matthew, an oil painting “attributed to Rembrandt van Rijn,” is for sale for $1.5 million. The painting’s eBay page provides its provenance (“from the collection of the late Yvonne Schotte, daughter of the Belgian magnate Hippolyte Schotte from castle Aalst”) and even includes an opinion on the authorship from the renowned Rembrandt scholar Gary Schwartz (“The painting does not seem to have the quality that would convince art historians and collectors that it was made by Rembrandt. . . . I would, therefore, be inclined to call the painting a copy after a lost work by Rembrandt”).6 It’s hard to argue with Schwartz, whose reputation is beyond reproach, not only because of his extensive expertise in all things Rembrandt, but also because of the quality of the image that is posted on the page. But an important question is, Did the Gary Schwartz really lend his opinion on this painting? It’s likely he did—there’s no evidence that he did not, and he debunks the painting’s authenticity—but that’s just it: any seller can describe the item they have posted for sale just about any way they want.
In order to take a closer look at the painting, eBay’s technology allows for the prospective buyer to magnify all 11 images of it for a better view, and using the tool makes it seem obvious that though the painting is certainly well done, it is not of the caliber of Rembrandt’s work. The zoom tool is essential to the buyer’s inspection, but it exposes one of the key limitations the art buyer faces on eBay: one shops in a two-dimensional world. Even with the magnification, one is not able to tell if the brush strokes are real or, for that matter, if the painting is really available. It can’t be looked at in different light at different angles, can’t have its craquelure inspected, can’t be taken in with all of the key three-dimensional visuals necessary to evaluate a work. And of course, the buyer can’t take full measure of the seller in this online marketplace, other than to look at his ratings from previous buyers. Such is part of the challenge of shopping for art on eBay.
The quality of the works for sale on the site—judging by the images—range from apparent masterworks to paintings by unknown artists who have set astronomical prices for their works based on an attempt to give themselves instant credibility, a dream to get rich quick, or a seriously mistaken view of their own talent. Yet despite the risks, a great amount of art is listed for sale on eBay. A search for the word “painting” in the category “art” on the site yielded nearly 460,000 results.7 There’s seemingly something for every art lover’s taste, from Photorealism to Abstract Expressionism, on eBay. And any time art, money, and a large number of wide-eyed novice shoppers are combined, con men aren’t too far away.
In 2014, the London-based newspaper the Telegraph conducted an investigation into two men, Geoffrey Spilman and David Henty, both amateur artists and each separately selling fake paintings on eBay. The men shared a favorite subject of their frauds: the painter L. S. Lowry. Lowry was perhaps an obvious choice—both of the forgers are middle-class British men, as was Lowry, whose works were inspired by everyday life in his hometown and surrounding area, as well as the “down and outs” who inhabited it. Moreover, and perhaps more pragmatically, Lowry’s materials were not highly complex, which enabled the forgers the ability to create very reasonable facsimiles of his work. Lowry wrote, “I am a simple man, and I use simple materials: ivory, black, vermilion (red), Prussian blue, yellow ochre, flake white and no medium (e.g., linseed oil). That’s all I’ve ever used in my paintings.”8 Of course, these same simple materials were easily accessible to Spilman and Henty.
Spilman, the middle-aged son of a vicar, lives in a flat in Warwickshire. His scheme involved the use of the well-worn provenance claim that the paintings he was selling belonged to a deceased relative—in his case, his father—and were found while he was rummaging through his home. He’d also sometimes resort to the “I found them at an art fair” story and claim that because he lacked paperwork on the painting, he could not guarantee provenance. Though it’s not certain that he created all of the paintings he sold by himself, what is clear is that when he did, he would forge the signatures of the artists on the finished works. In addition to Lowrys, Spilman sold works by 25 other artists on eBay, including fellow Briton Ashley Jackson, a watercolorist whose daughter was tipped off by a client that paintings alleged to be by her father were listed on eBay. Because he had described some of the fraudulently signed works as “genuine and original,” Spilman was arrested and issued a warning by police. eBay acted quickly and shut his seller account down, but Spilman, who employed multiple eBay accounts to sell and artificially inflate bids, established new eBay shops through which he sold his paintings.9
Rather than discontinue his scam, Spilman sought ways around the police. He contacted David Henty, a failed artist living in Brighton who was also producing counterfeit paintings attributed to Lowry and others. Henty, who was previously convicted for his role in a passport forging scam, was also identified by the Telegraph as a forger selling art he himself had created via multiple eBay shops. Like many other forgers, Henty would shop for older, worn canvases to give his works an air of legitimacy. Confronted by the newspaper about his scheme, he at first denied it, but then took a sense of pride in his work, deriding the counterfeits produced by the likes of Spilman. “If you know Lowrys they [other forgers] use the wrong colours,” he said. “He only used five colours his whole life. I have to have an interest in an artist to copy him. I would call myself a copyist not a forger.”10
Henty is entitled to call himself whatever he wishes, but it doesn’t change the damage that he and others like him do when they flood the market with knockoffs of other artists’ works. In addition to putting the value of the paintings at risk—Spilman and Henty sold their works for as little as a few hundred pounds, while Jackson’s watercolors typically fetch six figures, and Lowry’s much more—the fakes damage the artists’ overall reputations. As long as there are Spilmans out there bearing counterfeit signatures of the true artist, the fakes are likely to be grouped with the authentic works. Said Jackson, “It is unjust that someone can play on my credibility by creating poor imitations in my name. To be honest, some of the fakes they were offering were really awful and it was embarrassing to think they were purportedly done in my name. . . . They are like my children and I like to see them grow and develop.”11
Paintings are not the only objets d’art to be posted and sold on eBay by a con man with a bold scheme. In the summer of 2011, James Coombes was a man on a very specific philanthropic mission: he had decided that he wanted to acquire and then donate a piece of art by the renowned glass sculptor Dale Chihuly to Gonzaga University’s Jundt Art Museum.12 Coombes spent months searching for the right piece before he settled on a Chihuly glass bowl he found on eBay, described as “Dale Chihuly Studio Seaform art glass signed early original bowl/vase.”13 On New Year’s Day 2012, the auction for the piece ended with Coombes as the highest bidder at a sale price of $1,591. Though he received the piece with no provenance, Coombes was pleased with what he had won, noting the Chihuly signature on the bowl, and maintained contact with the seller, Michael Little. He soon learned that Little had more Chihulys for sale and the pair agreed to meet.
Chihuly’s works are highly sought after and quite valuable. They are not usually sold out of an old SUV, but Coombes was not deterred when Little showed up with the Chihuly glassworks in his older model Ford Explorer. In fact, Coombes bought ten more pieces from Little—this time including drawings—for $6,500. So impressed was Coombes with the works he was buying from Little that on the very next day, he bought another 22 Chihulys for an additional $4,500. Clearly, the low prices and rather unconventional sales venue were not enough to make Coombes think that maybe he was being had.
Instead, after a couple of months had passed, Coombes decided he wanted the rest of Little’s “Venetian Series” collection. So he traveled to Little’s home in Renton, Washington (also Chihuly’s home state), put down $10,000 cash with a promise to pay an additional $10,000, and bought the remaining pieces from the whole lot. When Coombes later received from Little 17 certificates of purchase signed by Chihuly, they indicated that the pieces had been sold through a Seattle gallery.
Though apparently very trusting of Little, Coombes wanted to be sure the art donation he was making to Gonzaga’s museum was legitimate. So he sought out a specialist to authenticate his buys, Katherine Elliott of Elliott Arts West. Given the unique nature of Chihuly’s work, there are very few people qualified to authenticate his artwork. Elliott is one such person: in addition to being an art dealer and appraiser specializing in Chihuly and other glass sculptures, Elliott actually had worked with the artist in his studio and had a hand in some of his early works. Little contacted Elliott via e-mail, and in their communications Little stated that many of the pieces presented for authentication came directly from Chihuly and his collaborator Parks Anderson, as “lots of surplus or overstock or unwanted/mistake/mishap pieces which was either given or sold to Belltown Art.”14
It didn’t take Elliott long to determine that the work sold to Coombes by Little was a forgery. Elliott pointed to the pieces’ proportions, the “indelicate and clunky” flowers, the “too large” spots of gold, and “sloppy” red jimmies as being problematic. As for the signature on the piece, that too was forged. She wrote, “It’s done with the wrong tool, it’s in the wrong place, and the date would not be correct if it was Chihuly’s work.”15 For a second opinion, Elliott turned to another Chihuly collaborator, glassblower and artist Martin Blank. Blank concurred with her findings, saying he could “guarantee” that the pieces in question were not authentic. Finally, Elliott offered her opinion as to the origin of the piece. “I do not believe the seller of this piece can also be the maker,” she stated. “I would guess [it] was made somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, probably as a knock-off.” Then, perhaps casting criminal suspicion on Little himself, Elliott wrote, “The real culprit is the person who signed and dated it as if it was Chihuly’s work, which it is not.” One other thing was certain: Coombes’s donation to Gonzaga, at least this time, was not to be.
Unfortunately, Coombes was not Little’s only victim. Elliott was approached by additional customers of Little’s who had bought forgeries. And as the scam continued and he conned additional victims, word made its way to James Vana, a trademark attorney representing Dale Chihuly. Vana, understanding that his client was a victim of a forger, contacted the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington to report the counterfeits. Soon, Special Agent Michael Larson of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) branch was on the case.
Larson uncovered the breadth of Little’s scheme, finding that the con man had used at least two different provenance stories. In one, he claimed that he had the art because a relative bought it with winnings from the lottery; in another, he stated that it was from a friend who was dying of cancer and was connected to the artist himself. When all was said and done, the HSI agent found that Little had victimized at least two dozen people before finally being arrested. When the scam was first discovered by Chihuly’s studio and eBay was notified, the company immediately pulled Little’s postings. Amazingly, Little went on with his frauds for an additional 18 months after being outed by Chihuly and eBay. As one of his victims would later say, “Michael Little is a masterful liar, cheat, and thief. I am so ashamed that I am not sure I can tell everyone what has happened.”16
Based on the airtight investigation put together by Larson and the federal prosecutor assigned the case, Matthew Diggs, as well as the diligent expertise of Katherine Elliott, Little was convicted of wire fraud for his use of eBay as his venue for advertising and selling fake artwork. A federal judge sentenced him to five months in prison and a restitution of $75,389. But the short-term damage had been done to Chihuly. As U.S. attorney Jenny A. Durkan stated, “Fraud schemes like this one target all artists and damage confidence in the marketplace.”17
Soon after Little was convicted, another man accused of committing fraud while selling art on eBay was facing federal criminal charges. In an affidavit filed in federal court in the Southern District of New York, FBI agent Meredith Savona accused an East Hampton man of concocting a five-phase scheme to defraud art buyers. Jovian “John” Re, a former woodworker and an amateur artist, was described as an Abstract Expressionist painter who “sold more than 60 purported paintings by Jackson Pollock to art collectors for approximately $1,889,390 that [he] falsely represented were created by the famous Abstract Expressionist American artist.”18
Re is an interesting figure, portrayed on various websites as a man of many interests and unique skills ranging from art expertise to submarines.19 Like Henty, Re had a previous conviction for counterfeiting. In his earlier case, he pleaded guilty in 1995 to criminal possession of a home printing press on which fake $20 bills were made, a crime for which he was sentenced to two to seven years in prison.20 Internet postings about Re depict a true enigma. One WordPress blog, written by a person who identified herself as “Nicole Hadley,” rebuts an unidentified “slanderous attack on Mr. John Re of East Hampton, NY who would otherwise be noted as a world expert in several modern and contemporary artists.” The testimonial goes on to tell of a 1998 meeting “Hadley” and her husband “Jeff” had with Re at the Museum of Modern Art, at which, upon considering a painting of a woman, Re stated “this painting is a forgery.” According to the writer, the trio was then approached by a curator who informed them that the painting in question “was in fact a reproduction.” The blog entry closes with mention that Re is also a “search and rescue diver” and thanks him for his service. Interestingly, the “character rebuttal” on behalf of Re is the one and only posting on “Nicole Hadley’s” blog. Furthermore, the writer, who describes herself as a collector of fine art, titled the post “John Re Art Connaisseur [sic].”21 Of course, as with so many things on the internet, it’s difficult to discern which—if any—of these postings are authentic.
Savona, whose prior assignment in the bureau included 12 years on the Organized Crime Squad, is a highly trained fraud and art crime expert serving on the FBI’s Art Crime Team. Her affidavit spelled out Re’s alleged crime as beginning with offering for sale the so-called Pollocks. Next, she described Re as using the tried-and-true story that the paintings had been found in the basement of a family that had been given the works directly by the artist himself. This, said the investigator, “was a lie that Re told his victims to give the paintings a plausible provenance, or chain of ownership, and to induce Re’s victims to buy the paintings.”22 Savona’s investigation revealed that, according to the alleged victims, Re said that he had been helping Barbara Schulte clean out her basement after the death of her husband, George, a fellow woodworker, when he came across the paintings.23
Next, the affidavit states, Re told each of his buyers that they were the sole owners of the entire collection of Pollocks found in the basement. In one instance, Savona wrote, Re threatened a buyer with the prospect of changing the stated provenance, thus rendering the paintings of no value. Finally, like his contemporaries Spilman and Henty, Re allegedly engaged in shill bidding to artificially and fraudulently inflate the prices of the purported Pollocks he offered for sale on eBay.
One of Re’s customers, identified only as “Customer-2” by Savona, became suspicious of the authenticity of the paintings purchased from Re and decided to seek an opinion from the International Foundation for Art Research, the well-respected New York–based organization with expertise in such work. Re became concerned with this decision and wrote to his customer, “I tries [sic] to make it clear not to [sic] long ago that using IFAR was NOT a good idea. I told you from horror stories I know to be true regarding IFAR . . . What the hell were you thinking, or were you letting someone do your thinking for you,”24 according to an e-mail quoted in the affidavit and attributed to Re. In relation to the IFAR testing, Re allegedly wrote, “I know so far you said they gave you some indication that the pieces are doing well.”25
In fact, the paintings were not doing well. IFAR’s exhaustive work on the 45 paintings presented to them was damning. They wrote to Customer-2 that they had conducted “a thorough investigation which included in person examination of all 45 paintings by specialists and conservators, extensive provenance and art historical research, and physical examination, and selective forensic testing of the materials.”26 The results: none of the 45 works were painted by Jackson Pollock. In addition to all of the examination and testing, IFAR found no evidence that George Schulte had a relationship with Jackson Pollock that would explain him having the paintings. Moreover, neither Schulte’s family nor his friends recall George claiming to have Pollocks or seeing them in the home. Worse, experts discovered “the use [of] old papers scumbled over with dark pigments to intentionally distress them.” This was “strongly suggestive of an attempt to deceive.”27
The FBI investigator wrote of another troubling instance, this time related to another alleged customer of Re’s. Savona reported that when this customer showed one of the purported Pollocks to a New York art dealer, some dirt was noticed on the painting. The dealer wet his finger with saliva to wipe it away (a common method of spot cleaning art) and found that paint came off of the artwork. This occurred in 2013, 57 years after the death of Pollock, by which time the paint would certainly have dried.28
Faced with the prospect of being exposed by one of his customers, the FBI states, Re resorted to threatening his clients. In one communication, he referenced a mafia crime family, telling a collector, “[I] would never threaten anybody unless I’m gonna follow through. I grew up in Brooklyn, ok? My mother’s from the Bonanno family, which means Gambino. When I tell you to do something, you don’t . . . be quiet. You don’t question me. You don’t talk over me. You don’t disrespect me. You just do it . . . And if you got to call me back and ask one more time, your mother’s going to start wondering why you stopped visiting her.”29
Re reportedly used associates to inflate bids on his Schulte Pollocks placed on eBay. In one case, the FBI found that he had e-mailed an individual requesting that he place a bid of $26,000 on a painting in an attempt to give legitimate shoppers the impression that there was serious interest in the work. He then asked another individual to make three separate shill bids on the painting.30
In May 2014, Agent Savona visited John Re and questioned him about the paintings he had offered for sale. According to the agent, Re described himself as an art expert and, at first, denied offering paintings for auction on eBay as “authentic.” But the agent came prepared and presented Re with copies of his eBay postings that did indeed make claims that his Pollocks were “authentic” and “real.” Faced with the evidence, Re, the affidavit states, admitted he sold the paintings as authentic but “he did not think he had done anything wrong.”31 Ultimately, Re pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud in federal court in 2014.
Though the FBI says Re’s total sales brought in nearly $2 million, the most expensive work he sold was alleged to have gone to Customer-2 at the price of only $60,00032—a figure substantially below the market value for a true painting by Pollock, whose works have sold for tens of millions of dollars. $60,000, however, for a painting that is essentially barely worth the price of the canvas is a nice profit. And it is clear evidence that there is no shortage of buyers who will ignore red flags like an inexplicably low price tag because they so badly want to believe they have found a hidden gem. But it’s nowhere near the highest price taken in by a scammer via eBay.
If there is one thing that must be sacrosanct in an online auction, it is trust. Whether a buyer is bidding on a lock of Abraham Lincoln’s hair, a ball signed by Derek Jeter, or a painting by Richard Diebenkorn, the bidder is making a leap of faith each time they enter a dollar figure and click on the “Place Bid” button. After all, as eBay warns, “Bidding is meant to be fun, but remember that each bid you place enters you into a binding contract. . . . If you win an item, you’re obligated to purchase it.”33 That’s not to say that the seller can do as he pleases. eBay makes it clear on its site that “Sellers can’t deny or reject any knowledge of or responsibility for the authenticity or legality their items.” eBay does not allow sellers to list items if they are not sure they’re authentic, or to use disclaimers like “I believe this is painted by Degas, but I can’t be sure,” “I cannot guarantee the authenticity of this item so please bid accordingly,” or “The autograph looks real to me.”34
When a young California attorney named Kenneth Walton offered for auction a painting purportedly by Diebenkorn, he was absolutely certain that the autograph didn’t look real. No, Walton was not an expert in the work of the Bay Area Abstract Expressionist. In fact, he wasn’t an expert in art at all. But he could be sure that the signature was not authentic because Walton was the person who signed it.
Walton and an associate, a con man named Ken Fetterman with whom he had served in the military, together with a third individual, Scott Beach, sought out cheap paintings to sell online on eBay utilizing all the dirty tricks they could come up with. They created 47 phony accounts and placed $300,000 worth of shill bids on hundreds of paintings they sold by attributing them to famous artists who had not painted them. They posted their worthless art under the names of such accomplished artists as Giacometti, Edward Hopper, and others. In all, Walton and his accomplices brought in $450,000 from more than 500 auctions.35 But it was the Diebenkorn that made the biggest splash.
After finding a cheap painting that resembled Diebenkorn’s style, he painted the initials “RD” and the number “52” (ostensibly to indicate the year it was created) at the bottom right corner of the work. Rather than posting it as an authentic Diebenkorn, Walton tried to be clever. In the description of the painting on eBay, he wrote, “I got this big abstract art painting at a garage sale in Berkeley . . . back in my bachelor days. Then I got married, and my wife has never let me keep it in the house. She says it looks like it was done by a nutcase.”36 Walton was playing the clueless rube who didn’t realize the treasure upon which he had stumbled, setting up his mark to jump on the “too good to be true” story. In furtherance of the backstory, Walton also posted a few other items to make his character seem more innocent and genuine, including an unopened roll of twine, a basketball, and a pewter frame.37 To an online shopper, it seemed like the eBay seller, named “golfpoorly,” was probably cleaning out his garage and decided to post some odds and ends in an online auction to make a few bucks. In fact, not only didn’t Walton have a Diebenkorn, he hadn’t a wife or a house, either. The innocent hayseed that Walton was portraying started the bidding for the painting at just 25 cents.38
Soon, the bids began to roll in, aided by dozens of shill bids that he and his cohorts arranged. The price for the painting ballooned to $135,805, with a man in the Netherlands the high bidder, which drew attention from the media, including the New York Times. In a May 2000 article on the Diebenkorn auction, Judith Dobrzynski wrote, “The six-figure sale is not only one of the highest prices paid online for art, it is also a powerful testimony to the ability of the Internet to ignite a sales frenzy, even for expensive items that may or may not be what people think they are.”39 Dobrzynski was right in her suspicion about the painting, of course. But the assertion about the sales frenzy was slightly off, if only because of the devious minds of Walton and his associates, for the price shot up at least in part due to the shill bids that they placed. Without it, other buyers might not have taken note of the sale, or perhaps would have associated low bids with low quality. Indeed, as the price rose due to fake bids, legitimate bids rose with them.
The attention that the sale of the Walton Diebenkorn garnered led eBay to examine the affair more closely. When they found that Walton had bid on his own offering, they voided the sale and found that he was using at least five different account names while his associates used an additional eight. eBay suspended all of the accounts, as well as two more brought to their attention by the Times. According to Special Agent Donald Vilfer of the FBI’s Sacramento office, the matter caught the bureau’s attention when Dobrzynski wrote a follow-up story reporting that Walton and others had engaged in cross-bidding on items and arranged for the posting of strong customer ratings on the site.40 Soon, Walton, Fetterman, and Beach were in the crosshairs of the FBI for internet fraud.
By March 2001, the trio was indicted by a federal grand jury for their fraud on eBay. Though the British newspaper the Guardian described Walton as a “bored lawyer,”41 he clearly paid attention in law school, quickly identifying his dim prospects in court and agreeing to cooperate with the government, as did Beach. Fetterman, ever the scammer, fled arrest and went on to assume false identities, including that of the famous Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard, before ultimately being arrested.42 Both Beach and Fetterman were convicted of their crimes in federal court.
The scam and his 30-month sentence behind him, Walton wrote a book chronicling his crimes titled Fake: Forgery, Lies and eBay. He also reflects upon his frauds somewhat wistfully, telling the Guardian, “I miss the thrill of the hunt and then seeing how much you can get for something when you put it up.” He also displays a keen understanding of what motivated his dupes, something he described as an “optimistic self-delusion” in which “people really want to believe they have found something good.”43
The timeframe of Walton’s scam coincided with an incidence of internet crime that had risen to a level warranting closer scrutiny and a stronger response from federal law enforcement. With cyber crime exploding exponentially as a worldwide problem, the FBI decided it had to take action and in May 2000 established a partnership with the National White Collar Crime Center to form the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). By its fourteenth anniversary, the IC3 had received 3 million complaints of internet crime. According to the group, the total dollar loss claimed from these complaints exceeds $2 billion.44 Clearly, internet fraud poses a great threat to consumers and the world’s economy. And where there exists a venue to scam a consumer, one can be sure that there’s a con artist looking to get rich quick using art as their merchandise. After all, the internet has been the vehicle used by many to make unimaginable riches almost overnight. From social media websites to YouTube personalities to online retailers like eBay, internet fortunes seem to be amassed even during economic downturns. All it takes is one person with a URL, a computer, an internet connection, and a dream. Or, as in the case of the scam artists, a devious scheme. There is no shortage of these sorts attempting to exploit trusting buyers on the internet, and with eBay the largest of the lot, it’s only natural that their services would be targeted. And they are quite often. As Lizzie Crocker wrote for the Daily Beast, “Since its inception, experts say, eBay has become a den of art forgery, an unregulated market where ignorant art enthusiasts are easy prey for forgers and scam artists.”45 But that’s not to say that the problem isn’t being addressed. eBay’s Ryan Moore, lead manager for business communication, reports that “bad activity is currently at an all-time low on eBay’s marketplace—down 50% over the last seven years (2007–2014). In addition, only a tiny fraction of all transactions on our platform—far less than 1%—experience any kind of bad activity.”46
Clearly, eBay works hard to counter fraud on its site, including scams related to art crime. One step they have taken in recent years is to enlist an expert in the field of art fraud to consult on an initiative to monitor art sales on the website. And the company told Crocker that it “aggressively detects and removes members who engage in any type of fraudulent behavior” and also provides shoppers with a link through which they can easily report an item that they suspect to be a fraudulent listing, at which point eBay undertakes a detailed review to remove any bad listing.47
Moore espoused the company’s philosophy when it comes to fraud protection. “For eBay, nothing is more important than the trust of our customers. We utilize a combination of sophisticated detection tools, enforcement and strong relationships with brand owners, retailers and law enforcement agencies to effectively combat fraudulent activity and present our customers with a safe, trusted shopping experience.” He added that buyers on eBay do have recourse if they are victims of fraud, stating, “In cases where an item is not as described or something goes wrong, eBay’s Money Back Guarantee ensures buyers get the item they ordered or they get their money back. Bottom line, when you buy and sell on eBay, we have your back.”48
In addition, eBay established a Global Asset Protection Team to “promote the safe use of its platforms and to collaborate with local, national and international law enforcement in apprehending and prosecuting criminals.” The team works to provide pertinent records to authorities investigating crimes committed using the site.49 Finally, eBay has utilized software to identify fraudulent activity on its site. The company provides information on its site about its efforts to combat fraud, using its own online Help pages to explain avenues available to buyers, sellers, and law enforcement to help combat suspected fraud. It’s an important mission, and recent history indicates that though fraud on eBay might be down, the site, like any gallery or auction house, remains an irresistible target for con men hoping to make a killing.