I contacted media relations at eBay on Monday with a bunch of questions. Still no response. I’ll follow up today. Still trying to find out if they are acknowledging a fraud, if they are pressing charges against the perpetrator and if they are consistently reimbursing victims.

There are two new instances of negative feedback on Nautiluso if you check out his profile here. These are from a classical buyer from the same auction. He was ripped off to the tune of about $3,400 and says on his feedback that eBay refunded his money. So far, everyone we’ve heard from directly has

received a refund either from eBay or PayPal. We’re anxious to hear if someone out there hasn’t been reimbursed.

I contacted a friend at The New York Times to see if they’d be interested in following up on this story. They expressed some interest but, in the end, decided to pass on it. I had hoped the threat of a national media spotlight might make eBay and PayPal more forthcoming with information. So it looks like we’re on our own here to try to decipher things and figure out what happened. Eventually, I would expect some other media outlets to get wise to this story, but we’ll keep plugging away regardless.