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Yahoo Japan Sued For Scam Auctions

from the how-is-this-yahoo's-fault dept

Fri, Apr 1st 2005 11:37am — Mike Masnick

It's actually somewhat surprising we don't hear more stories like this. Yahoo Japan has an online auction service, and just like every online auction service, some scammers use it to pull the old "sell something you don't have" trick. Of course, the people who are fault are the scammers -- but upset scam victims apparently figured they need to look somewhere else to sue, and the obvious choice is Yahoo Japan. So, despite just being the platform for the auctions, there's now a class action lawsuit against Yahoo Japan because some scammers used the auction site. This is going to be a very difficult case for those suing to prove. It's not Yahoo's fault -- even though the lawsuit claims that Yahoo somehow knew these auctions were fraudulent. This is yet another case where people sue the big company, rather than suing whoever actually broke the law.

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4 Comments

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dumpus, 1 Apr 2005 @ 2:39pm

It's coming...
And the useless dorpus reply about Japan/Asia should appear right about now...
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- dorpus, 1 Apr 2005 @ 3:39pm
  
  Re: It's coming...
  I'll just say that used goods are not popular over there, so the notion of auctioning belongings is relatively new.
  
  I'll add that Japan has fewer laws against job discrimination, so Yahoo Japan has put out job ads in newspapers that specify they want "male programmers aged 25-35". Well, at least they're honest -- it's the same way in the Valley, even if nobody will admit it.
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CSK, 14 Mar 2006 @ 7:51pm

Fraud
Yahoo Japan derives income from each Auction conducted on Yahoo Auctions Japan - 3% of the selling price. Only Premium members are able to conduct auctions and their credit card is billed on a monthly basis for subscription to the Yahoo Auction service. Aiding and abbeting criminal scams and receiving a share of the loot is to my mind reason enough to attribute fault to Yahoo.
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- Sari H. Krassin, 28 Mar 2006 @ 12:44am
  
  Re: Fraud
  Yahoo and ALL auction sites need to put protect their patrons. I'm sure these folks would not be suing if they weren't given the deaf ear and cold shoulder bit. They need to protect their patrons and have inside investigators and more accountabliity to find and procescute fraud.
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