They're at it again on eBay. Sounds like a bad Cheech and
Chong bit to me.
Three men attempted to auction 500 pounds of marijuana on
eBay Tuesday night until company officials pulled the plug--
almost a day after the sale began.
The sale began roughly 8:40 p.m. PT on Tuesday night and
ceased sometime 21 hours later, according to a screenshot on
AuctionWatch.com, which first reported the story.
A spokesman for
confirmed that the auction was
live long before company officials were notified. They quickly
shut the site down thereafter, according to eBay spokesman
Kevin Pursglove.
The three auctioneers, who appeared in a photograph next to
numerous plastic bags filled with what looked like marijuana,
claimed in a written description that the drugs were "Holland's
Best." Seven people had made bids that had reached $10 million
by the time the auction was closed, according to
AuctionWatch.com.
"We immediately notified the authorities," Pursglove
said. "I can tell you that we will cooperate with law
enforcement and help them with prosecution."
This latest incident comes at a time when eBay is striving
to take an aggressive approach to barring unlawful sales on its
site.
Earlier this month, in separate incidents, eBay executives
shut down auctions that claimed to be selling a human kidney
and an unborn baby. Federal law prohibits the sale of human
organs.
Though Pursglove declined to say what law enforcement agency
eBay contacted, a spokesperson for the Drug Enforcement Agency
said officials there are planning to crack down on drug sales
over the Web.
"This is something we would be very interested in," said
Jocelyn Barnes, spokeswoman for the San Francisco DEA
office. "We would start an investigation. We've heard of things
like that coming up on these sites and have started to take a
look on how to investigate. We do aggressively pursue those
avenues."
