Last year (2005), our business answered 23 subpoenas, suspended over 100 active classified accounts, and prevented over 100 vendors of "questionable" identity from registering accounts in the first place, all in the normal course of our operations in fighting fraud and theft in our pet communities. We can document each and every instance.
Unfortunately, there will always be a few that slip through our screens and past our moderators, at least for a while, but they are relatively few, and get caught fairly quickly in most instances. Of course, people never hear about these things, other than in very general terms, because we don't release information about our users, good or bad, and it's unlikely that someone banned from our site for loss or theft will stand up in public wave a flag and say "kingsnake.com banned me for theft!". It certainly isn't conducive to them remaining in the pet industry to do so. Besides, it's much trendier to say "I got banned for breaking kingsnake.com's rules - bad kingsnake," and since there is no way for anyone to check whether another
user was banned for theft or just TOS violations such as profanity, it allows some of the fraud artists a "cloak" to explain why they aren't on kingsnake anymore without having to explain they got zapped for theft. Look at that banned guy next to you. You really sure you know why he was banned? All you know is what he told you, and he knows we aren't talking.
Since we don't discuss users, and thieves are unlikely to raise their hands, to our users it often appears that we are taking little or no action regarding theft, and often they choose to take us to task publicly about it. Usually this involves a user or vendor who has been taken, who felt that we did not take appropriate action to prevent the theft, who then gets themselves banned from our web site for breaching our terms of service for either posting abusive comments about our business or the other user who "burned" them.
This is one of those damned if you do, damned if you don't problems that we deal with every day.
Why don't we respond by expsoing the people banned for fraud and theft? kingsnake.com has the ability to make or break a vendor's career in the industry, sometimes in hours. For us as a business to officially "out" a vendor as a thief when they have as yet to be convicted of anything would damage a vendor's credibility, probably irretrievably, and open us to a tremendous risk and liabilty in terms of defamation. It would be completely wrong and irresponsible for us to hold our own kangeroo court, being that we
have not been tasked with the job nor given the authority to do so by the government. Additionally, it would breach our privacy agreements to discuss these account holders, or any other account holders for that matter, with anyone other than the account holders themselves.
In most instances, a user or vendor is banned for fraud and theft based on our receiving an FBI fraud complaint, but this is merely a complaint, made by someone who may or may not exist, about an issue that may or may not be legitimate. Because the complainant is willing to go forward and file a criminal complaint, we assume that they are aware that filing a false complaint is a federal felony, and that whatever the facts of the case, there is enough concern for us to warrant suspending the vendor's account until the issue can be resolved. That does not mean that we agree with the complaint or have reviewed the supporting data, or interviewed witnesses, or passed judgment. That means the complainant feels that he has enough evidence and documentation to support a criminal complaint. We are not
funded, nor has the government granted us the ability, to hold our own summary court of law to determine the facts in a case. That is, of course, why law enforcement agencies and the court system exist.
When a complainant chooses NOT to file a complaint with law enforcement after contacting us, we are left with few options other than to assume that the incident did not happen as described, was not an issue that warranted law enforcement involvement, or was an attempt by the complainant to "submarine" a vendor or diminish their stature in our eyes and the eyes of the reptile industry.
In many cases our suspensions have the effect of making the vendor pony up and resolve the issue. In other cases they do not, and the vendor remains banned. They still have not been convicted of anything in most cases, just banned from using our services.
Why don't we allow our users to complain about these people "defrauding" them on our web sites?
Simple - because our sites are not a court of law, in most instances the person they are complaining about has not been convicted of any crimes, and we are not going to allow our systems to be used as a "court of public opinion" to defame people. Time after time on our sites (and others) it has been shown that allowing negative comments with no transaction verification is too often abused by vendors or users to "submarine" their competition or other users they don't like personally. Additionally, it allows uninvolved individuals to become participants in an online "necktie party" and egg the others on. Finally, many of these complaints are untrue and/or unsupported by facts. If we were to allow it on our site it would be grossly unfair and would open us up once again to substantial liability.
Why don't we implement a feedback system in the classifieds like EBay has? Another good question.
EBay runs a closed loop system, one in which both the buyer and seller use EBay's systems and emails to essentially "close" the deal. Ebay, and to some extent PayPal, can track that a person has made a bid, and won an auction,through their system, it knows both buyer and seller, and can let each of them comment on that specific deal. You will note that EBay only allows only the two participants in the deal to leave feedback, and not outside parties.
We run what is known as an open loop system, in which our actual interaction between buyers and sellers is minimal. We track neither the contacts nor the transactions, and we never know who the buyers are. In fact, we allow non-registered users to participate as buyers if the vendor chooses to allow them to respond to their ads, thus taking us even further out of the loop. Not knowing who the actual buyers are prevents us from verifying that a transaction has occurred, and this prevents us from letting buyers comment on their purchase simply because we have no way to know who they are.
So, what's with all the lawyers and legal talk?
We are an internet business, a media entity, in which people outside our company use our systems to interact with third parties. Sometimes these interactions result in criminal or civil litigation. As I noted above, last year we were subpoenaed 23 times by law enforcement, not to mention the interactions with attorneys regarding civil matters. We rarely initiate civil legal action on our own, and we never play the lawyer card first. We only refer people to our lawyers when someone threatens us with legal action. You can bet anyone that has heard from or been referred to our lawyers has literally asked to talk to them. But we do need them. They spend a lot of time reviewing subpoenas, working with law enforcement, reviewing hate mail and threats, and working with our security staff on fraud and
theft related issues.
Will the fraud level on kingsnake.com decrease? Sadly, probably not, and for some there is little recourse.
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