eBays #1 affiliate gets 5 months in federal prison

Totally agree with you on the first part. A lot of affiliates out there playing by the rules, working hard to make a living.

On the second point, he probably won't receive much special treatment in prison. Defrauding a large corporation out of that much money will probably earn him a little respect. I remember hearing that's what happened to Bernie Madoff.

$25k fine for $28M??

That's less than a slap on the wrists lol

This is what he has to say

https://forums.digitalpoint.com/thre...#post-18951368

"Anyway, long story short is that this has been going on since 2007, so this ends everything (including civil case with eBay).

I've spent millions in legal fees over the last 7 years, and taking both the criminal and civil stuff to trial would have cost many millions more. So I look at it this way... I'm not sure we would have lost the case had it gone to trial, but there's no guarantee. It's cheaper to settle/take a plea deal, and not have to worry about something crazy happening in a trial where a jury feels like they are doing you a "favor" and fine you $10M restitution and put you in prison for 10 years.

When the option presents itself to do a global settlement that ends the criminal and civil suit, spend a few months at prison camp, well... it's something you will seriously consider regardless if you think you could have prevailed in the civil or criminal suits. After 7 years neither had even gone to trial yet and would have cost many millions of dollars to defend (so in a best case scenario, you are out millions of dollars to defend something, and probably spend another 5 years of your life dealing with the legal system). Just want to get all this dumb stuff over with really."

Yeah, some do not understand this, but it is SIMPLE!!!!!!!!! The idea is SUPPOSED to be that a person PRESELLS a person on an item, they click through(SETTING THE COOKIE), and somehow don't buy.

The cookie is there so the affiliate, HAVING PRESOLD, gets credit for a later DIRECT sale! The buyer either types ebay.com to go there directly, or click on the affiliates page later.

What "digital point" did was TRANSPARENTLY stuff the cookies! The visitor never knew! If another affiliate made the sale, they would generally get the credit.

If EBAY advertised their site, and got a visitor with a stuffed cookie, THEY should get 100% credit for the sale, but that affiliate that NEVER presold gets credit, because of the cookie.

So prestuffing the cookie is a kind of THEFT.

Steve

Best way to steal billions is by writing laws then you get to steal legally! Thats what they do and lets us little guys argue the little stuff that's not important to them.

Affiliates earned when someone won an auction or used buy now. Which is easy to implement.

-g