$1.9 Billion fine against ebay for selling emissions cheat devices?

[rockmafia5]

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/us-sues-ebay-allowing-sale-183000343.html

This could be bad for motors sellers. 

[inhawaii]

If you read it on the interweb, it has to be true.

[slati_2013]

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@inhawaii wrote:

If you read it on the interweb, it has to be true.

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Why would it not be true? It is easy on the "interweb" to verify anything. 

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-files-complaint-alleging-environmental-violations-... 

[evry1nositswindy]

I read it too.  Not sure how that would work because technically, eBay doesn't sell anything.  

[inhawaii]

Technically I said it was true.   😉

Yeah I had my doubts coming from yahoo news.

But after reading your post and link, I stand corrected.

[6al_4v]

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@evry1nositswindy wrote:

I read it too.  Not sure how that would work because technically, eBay doesn't sell anything.  

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Really? I have hundreds of purchases that show i bought  items from " Ebay Corp"... not individual Sellers. 

The point of the lawsuit however is that eBay allows  the sales to take place on their site.....

I'm rootin' for the government on this one.

[sextons-sweet-deals]

It is true. This was stated once on the news and tossed to the side. 

The news is more focused on the coffee flavor for Fall and the new phone that is overheating. Great free publicity!

Justice Department Files Complaint Alleging Environmental Violations by eBay

[sumsum70]

The story was in the news last week. eBay doesn't have to be the seller, just like they are liable for collecting sales tax. "Marketplace facilitator" nonsense.

They will end up settling for some number less than 1.9B. Karma for the extra profits made with promoted ransom and tampered search results.

[1tuna]

I read this in the sunday bucks intelligencer paper that comes on saturday

it had a bunch of pesticides and stuff that have been sold and some that are not supposed to be sold

to tell you the truth it is small potatoes

ebay cancels 1 million listings a day for recalled items

illegal items are on ebay everyday and every day ebay cancels 1 million of them

here is the link

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2022/12/21/recalled-toys-facebook-ebay/10866152002/

@rockmafia5 

[gosimus]

@rockmafia5 

< US sues eBay >    

The article states that emission devices are not the only thing DOJ is suing about.  They're throwing the kitchen sink at eBay.  The first thing I thought of was that it sounds like a shakedown. 

I don't know about the the DOJ but I do know about the NRC; in fact the NRC openly admits that, although their funding technically comes from Congress, they are required, by law, to find enough violations to produce the fines to reimburse 90% of their funding to the Treasury.  https://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/regulatory/licensing/general-fee-questions.pdf     

I used to work at a commercial nuclear power plant.  There were two on-site resident NRC inspectors.  Their claimed purpose was working hand in hand with the station toward ensuring safety to the public.  Their actual purpose was to find violations to squeeze every dollar possible out of the utility, the cost of which had to be passed on to the consumers. 

Of course, the utilities have to pay up ... legal fees to contest their allegations would cost more than just forking over the fifty grand every once in a while.     

[bennotbill]

There is a similar push in the UK by some in government to make eBay responsible for all the dangerous devices on their site.

I would guess the finger would be firmly pointing at the Chinese items and their fake safety compliant symbols. Removing all that dangerous junk would be good thing and long overdue.

[monroe67]

"This could be bad for motors sellers."

Well.  If I were an eBay "motors seller", I would not try to sell an after-market toxic emissions cheat device.  
But that's just me.  I have chosen not to live my life as a liar and/or a cheater.  Nor as an intentional polluter.

A few days I read a quote from a lawyer for the EPA who referred to eBay as a retailer.  That is a false statement. 

BTW -- yahoo / entertainment is reporting legal news?!?  Yeah -- really trustworthy.

[the-hook-and-the-loop]

Coming Soon = 40% Suggested promoted rates or NO VISIBILITY FOR YOU!

Someone has to pay these fines. For the past 2 years, we've been paying the Steiner's restitution. Now we can pay into this.

[gamersbaystore]

Oh this is nothing. Just wait until feds sue ebay for defrauding their millions of sellers by intentionally manipulating prices and charging them fees for services that were never rendered (paying for a store front that does not represent the products you actually sell).

[valueaddedresource]

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@the-hook-and-the-loop wrote:

Coming Soon = 40% Suggested promoted rates or NO VISIBILITY FOR YOU!

Someone has to pay these fines. For the past 2 years, we've been paying the Steiner's restitution. Now we can pay into this.

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@the-hook-and-the-loop just to be clear, nothing has been paid to the Steiner's for restitution at this point, at least according to publicly available documents from the civil and criminal cases.

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/What-s-the-eBay-response-to-60-minutes-segment-on-harassing/m-...

Some of the criminal defendants were ordered to pay fines, but generally speaking there are important differences between fines and restitution in criminal cases.

A fine is meant to be part of the punishment and is usually paid to the local/state/federal jurisdiction for the case.

On a much lower level think of it like if you get a ticket for causing a traffic accident - that ticket is a fine, the money gets paid to the court, not to the person whose car you hit, and the fines the court system collects usually go to fund various law enforcement or community programs.

Restitution is typically an amount that is determined to be paid to victims of a crime to compensate for losses in some way - again going back to the traffic incident, if you were found to have engaged in reckless driving for example you might be ordered to pay restitution to cover the medical bills or lost wages of the person you ran into (assuming insurance doesn't). That would be separate from and in addition to the ticket/fine you would pay to the court.

Here's a good general article about the some of the differences between fines and restitution.

https://www.lawyers.com/legal-info/criminal/criminal-law-basics/what-are-criminal-fines.html

Per the documents in all of the criminal cases that have completed sentencing so far - the dollar amounts have all been listed under the heading of "fine" while a separate column titled "restitution" was left blank.

The civil case is still ongoing and while settlement talks have been ongoing, the parties are apparently too far apart on any agreements and at this point it's still headed for a tentative 2025 trial date.

eBay's 10-K filed in February this year did reveal they set aside ~$64 Million in relation to the cyberstalking cases as well as these EPA claims and some issues with the DEA over items being sold on the site as well but it's important to note that was just an initial amount set aside for dealing with these issues (which could mean legal costs of fighting them and/or proposed settlements), not that anything has actually been paid or settled.