I have some pretty compelling evidence that a trademe user is shill bidding on their own auction.

I saw an item listed last week by trader 'x'. I bid but did not win the auction.

The wining bidder, 'y' bid $111.

Almost as soon as the auction ended, the item was offered to bidders/watchers for $200.

Shortly after, the item was re-listed by 'x'.

I was still interested but I worried that perhaps 'y' had found out something bad about the listing and had withdrawn.

So I looked into the history of 'y' the winning bidder.

'y' had been a member for several years but had no feedback history apart from a note from trademe support that stated that they had been the winning bidder on an item but had not completed the trade.

I clicked through to the item. It was from about 5 years ago and the 'unlucky' vendor was 'x'.

The two items were very different. The first was a for car parts. The second was a server.

Then, I looked at the feedback for the vendor. It turns out that 'x' has an unusually large number of trades where the auction winner did not complete the trade.

'x' is clearly using a number of other trademe accounts to bid on his own auctions. I emailed tradme support but that went nowhere.

Is anyone else likely to take an interest? 'x' does not appear to be a professional trader so the commerce commission will not see it as in their realm of interest. For just a few hundred bucks, I suspect that the police would rather not be bothered. Is there anyone else who might take an interest?