eBay man sentenced to jail
p2p news / p2pnet: Unhappy eBay online auction customers are legion, but a Romanian programmer and engineer who allowed his anger get the better of him will pay dearly.
Unhappy with eBay’s business practices, he admitted e-mailing threats to eBay chief executive Meg Whitman and company founder Pierre Omidyar.
As a result, he’s been sentenced to five months in prison, says the Associated Press.
"Florin Horicianu, a naturalized U.S. citizen living in Ridgewood, N.Y., also received five months of electronic monitoring and was ordered to stay away from eBay employees and events, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s office in San Francisco," says the story.
"Among the statements included in the e-mails was ‘I will haunt and hurt you and your family’."
Also See:
Associated Press – EBay user gets 5 months in prison for threats against execs, April 25, 2006
April 26th, 2006 at 6:31 pm
When he said haunt perhaps he meant hunt anyway what a moron
April 26th, 2006 at 7:04 pm
I’d love to know what the original beef was. Ebay DOES have a way with people.
April 26th, 2006 at 8:01 pm
“Ebay DOES have a way with people.”
And taking matters into its own hands, especially eBay/PayPal:
http://www.paypalsucks.com
April 26th, 2006 at 10:08 pm
And I suppose you could write perfect Romanian without making a single mistake?
April 26th, 2006 at 10:26 pm
While the alleged conduct of the Mr. Horicianu is certainly not acceptable, neither is impounding (confiscating? stealing?) the money in Paypal accounts where there is only a mere allegation of a violation of Paypal’s terms of service. Very little in the way of due process is accorded the alleged ‘violator.’ Even if there was a violation, but it didn’t involve fraud (like collecting payment for some naughty adult item that was delivered to a satisfied customer) they should remit the balance to the account holder and close the account. Instead the balance is forfeited as ‘damages’ for the violation, even though the fees for the payments have been dedected from the subscriber’s account. It would be a big stretch to then litigate a claim of damages in civil court.
Furthermore, there are some clever traps embedded in the ebay/Paypal dynamic whereby one can legitimately sell items on ebay within the scope of ebay TOS, yet using Paypal to collect payment for such items violates Paypal TOS. It would be extremely cynical to think this was a deliberate strategy on the part of ebay, but almost nothing is surprising these days.
–TG
April 27th, 2006 at 1:12 am
This sot of stuff happens a lot with PayPal accounts.
I wonder why people still using their services.
April 30th, 2006 at 2:49 am
For some people, it’s the only game in town if they wish to accept credit card payments. Paypal’s factors (credit card fees) are much more reasonable than some alternatives like StormPay.