The Web's Black Market - EBay works closely with the FBI - Company Business and Marketing

Industry Standard, The, Dec, 2000 by Ivan Gale

Jay Monahan admits there have been some pretty shady items for sale on eBay. "One guy was selling 3 grams of plutonium," says Monahan who is associate general counsel for the auction site. "We took it down."

Of course, sometimes an outrageous listing means someone's hawking a hoax. But the fact is that the Web provides a wide net for people to fence stolen or illegal wares. EBay says it has worked closely with the FBI, the State Department, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and even the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to investigate suspicious items on its exchange. In one case, eBay found a missile for sale, but kept the item listed so the Defense Department could go undercover to arrest the seller.

So, who's policing the Net? No one and everyone, it seems. "Every agency from the FBI to the Treasury to Customs to the Postal Service is trying to develop areas of expertise right now," says Lt. Lon Ramlan of the San Francisco Police Department, which just created a high-tech crimes unit. The FDA may get in on the act, too. President Clinton has proposed giving the agency $10 million to hire investigators to root out online pharmacies that push pills without requiring prescriptions.

Even if it's not clear who's watching, the Net probably isn't the best place to unload illegal wares. Microsoft says it's already taken legal action against 7.500 sites it found selling pirated copies of its software, and eBay notes that its members send in hundreds of tips each week. With millions of eyeballs scouring the auction site each day. Monahan concludes, "eBay is probably the dumbest place on Earth someone could try to sell illegal items."

Believe It or Not

There's more to eBay than the used crockery trade, as 1999's "one healthy kidney for sale" listing made clear. Among the more bizarre -- and mostly illegal -- items that have popped up on the exchange:

AK-47s

Cuban cigars

DirecTV scrambler

Human soul

Lawn darts

Missiles

Newborn children

Nuclear cruise-missile-carrying submarine

Plutonium

Pounds of marijuana

Russian-made rocket launcher

Saber-toothed tiger fang

Stolen shampoo shipment

Tickets to a death-row execution