But Martin believes eBay could be doing more in validating where large supplies come from to begin with. “Someone who’s selling 300 brand-name sweatshirts should be able to produce legitimate receipts showing where they were purchased if they were challenged by eBay.”

Even so, eBay does more in co-operating with law enforcement than other sites if credible evidence is provided, says Jones. The company offers training programs to help police investigate crime on its site, and has trained about 500 officers in Canada over the past five years. “We have senior officials on the ground in Asia, Rumania, Korea and other places, and supports in place so police don’t get lost in the system.”

The company also has policies in place to cut through red tape in investigations. “Unlike other e-commerce companies, eBay is one of the only ones that provides law enforcement with information on a simple request instead of requiring a subpoena. This is stated in our privacy policy.”

But eBay can only co-operate to the extent that local privacy laws in various jurisdictions permit them to disclose information about sellers and buyers, he adds.

This is a major stumbling block. Privacy laws are very fragmented across states in the U.S., and provinces such as Ontario have strong privacy regulations, so a victimized Canadian company looking to get information will face difficulties, says Martin. “It all depends on the origin of the person selling the stolen product. And getting law enforcement agencies to co-operate across jurisdictions is also difficult.”


Inventory control
Although it may seem an impossible task to track thieves online who can change their identities and e-mail addresses in a flash, Navarro says they nevertheless have consistent patterns. “They tend to use the same verbiage and pictures in their postings. We often find them popping up repeatedly under different names and e-mails, but we can still identify them because the rest of the posting is exactly the same.”

But even the best online sleuthing will be stymied if companies can’t prove the items being resold on eBay were stolen from them, says Martin. “Inventory control is the start and end of it. The first thing police will ask is, ”˜How do you know those items are yours?’ Being able to identify the items and show proof of loss is paramount.”

If a shipment of items is stolen from a truck, it’s important that companies have a physical inventory of the actual items that were loaded on the truck, he says. “So if the items show up eBay, security people can buy one and validate it came from stolen shipment.”

This is where many retailers and manufacturers fall down, he says. Companies need to get their own house in order before they can successfully investigate online fraud. But it takes time and money to log items properly so they can be tracked, and many companies are cutting back in these areas.

“This is particularly true in retail due to their small margins. It’s taken years for the industry to finally accept the fact it needs to put EAS (electronic article surveillance) tags on merchandise so it doesn’t unlawfully walk out the front door. But there are no beeps or EAS readers for stuff that goes out the back door.”