Rick Williston wrote: Not sure what it being in France has to do with it, but
it is a bit farfetched. As long as e-Bay provides seller's information when
fraud is present I don't see how they can be held accountable for anything>
My aunt fanny they should not be held accountable. Since its very inception,
eBay has refused to accept any and all responsibility for those who perpetrate
fraud on their site. And I have the documentation to prove it.
I have had some experience in authenticating some early 20th century
western/cowboy art of the Taos Society of Artists, including for Sothebys. (My
wifes uncle was one of the founders of the Society, we collect his work, and
we are involved with other descendants and his biographer.)
I have found numerous fakes and frauds asserting they were by Buck Dunton or
other of the six founders. I have notified eBay *in detail*, and I have had
other family members and experts contact eBay. Each time, eBay responded that
their hands were clean because they only provided a forum for buyers and
sellers to meet. They insisted it was not the role to ensure the legitimacy of
anything, OR TO TAKE ANY ACTION in the case of fraud. In all of the complaints
I was involved with, eBay refused to remove, investigate, or take any kind of
action against the those involved in fraud involving significant thousands of
dollars.
Fortunately, better luck was found by going to some States Attorneys General.
New York was particularly cooperative, taking evidence and indicting one ring
that stretched from New York to Florida.
In my view, when eBay is notified of suspected (or known) fraud, it simply
becomes a co-conspirator in the fraud being perpetrated when it claims no
responsibility.
(I will say that there are bargains. For a couple of hundred dollars, one train
buff purchased a painting of a locomotive engineer in a train crash. Although,
it was completely out of Uncle Bucks genre, it bore his signature. I was
initially skeptical, but we were later able to authenticate it by finding the
original illustration in, as I recall, a Colliers magazine! Its value? About
$50,000 (a paltry sum because it was not in his specialty of cowboys and the
west, about which he was an expert.)
Buster Evans
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