Shill Bidding on eBay: A Case Study
For anyone interested, a detailed case study of a classic, blatant shill bidder on eBay, and a comment on eBay’s attitude thereto, at http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php

eBay introduces absolute anonymity for (shill) bidders

In Australia and the UK (at the least) eBay has now obscured auction bidding to the point that genuine bidders have got absolutely no chance of detecting and thereby protecting themselves from “shill” bidding (a criminal offence in most civilised countries) by unethical vendors. Notwithstanding eBay’s statements to the contrary, this application of absolute anonymity by eBay serves no purpose other than to deceive consumers; and the same criticism has always applied to eBay’s other facility, “User ID kept private” (aka “the shill bidders’ stairway to paradise”). Again, notwithstanding eBay’s various pronouncements about shill bidding being banned on eBay, eBay is now knowingly “aiding and abetting” such shill bidders, at the expense of consumers ...

The full detailed version of the above comment at:
http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php

Shill bidding is when you bid up another person's items deliberately to inflate the auction price. It's not that shrill, but eBay don't like it and they will suspend you temporarily or permanently if they know!

A bidder, that bids to put up the price, but has no intention of buying the item. Some sellers do this themselves ( under another name ) or get a mate to do it, so the selling price is higher.

It's called "shill" (not shrill) bidding and it is when an eBayer creates false accounts (or recruits "partners") to places bids to increase the price of an item. It's prohibited on eBay and you can find out more about it here:

http://pages.ebay.com/.../intro.html