WN: For many people writing a book can be a redemptive act.
They just give you quick fixes of something you want. It's like a lot of things on the internet - e-mail, blogs, RSS feeds - things you have to check on a regular basis. It is an addiction of a sort, or at least it's a habit that's really hard to break. WN: For some people eBay seems to be this addiction that's hard to break. At this point, I no longer have any connection (to eBay). They threatened to sue me if I didn't sell it, so I wound up selling the company. Eventually eBay found out I was running it. I ended up starting an eBay software company called Hammer Tap. The first thing I wrote was an eBay fee calculator, and things took off from there. A couple of my brothers were computer programmers and really loved it, so I decided to give it a try. I was forced to quit selling on eBay and eBay banned me for life and I had to give up (my) law license, so I really didn't know what to do for my career. Walton: Well, it was an ironic twist to the story.
WN: I think a lot of people will be surprised to hear how you earn your living these days. In a way it was my legal background, the way I could research these things and come up for a reason this wasn't illegal that got me into trouble. It's less serious than a speeding ticket, so I was shocked that the feds wanted to prosecute it as a felony. Walton: In California, shill bidding has been an infraction for a long time, subject to just a $100 penalty. Were you surprised when you got caught and by how hard the law came down on you? WN: As a result of what you did, you became a felon, lost your law license, and it sounds like your personal life suffered as well. That's been a big improvement to the site, probably as a direct result of complaints that arose after the Diebenkorn scandal. I'm not going to say it's impossible anymore, but I think that's much tougher. They put into place some very complex pieces of software to police that. Walton: In the wake of the scandal, eBay really cracked down on shill bidding, and made it much more difficult for sellers to bid on their own items or (let) people they know bid on their own items. WN: How many of the techniques you used are no longer possible today because eBay has cracked down on them, or people have become more savvy? Of course, I don't have a kid or a Big Wheel. Walton: There was a hole in the painting and I said my kid ran into it with his Big Wheel and you might be able to fix it with duct tape. WN: You said your kid ran over it with a Big Wheel. My description of the Diebenkorn painting was just a complete fable to make me look like a hapless everyman rube who found this painting in his garage, didn't know it's by Diebenkorn and puts it up and there's these letters in the corner but he doesn't know to mention and they just happen to appear in the corner of one of the photographs.
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