Top Bid For Domain A $10Mil Hoax

The whopping $10-million winning bid in the
auction of the Internet domain Year2000.com has turned out to be a
prank, according to online auction destination eBay Inc.

However, eBay spokesman Kevin Pursglove told Newsbytes today that
it is still not known if the sellers of the address - Y2K prophet
Peter de Jager and Internet marketing firm Tenagra Corp. - will be
lefty empty handed.

For one thing, Pursglove said, it has been determined only that the
winning bid was a hoax. He said eBay is now working with the
sellers to help them contact the individuals who placed some of the
13 bids received to see which of them, if any, are legitimate.

Bidding for the domain - currently home to the Year 2000
Information Center - ended on eBay at midnight Jan. 1 and by that
time the auction has received two offers in the $10-million range.
After sitting on eBay since Dec. 21 without attracting a single bid
matching a $1-million minimum set by Canadian de Jager and Houston,
Texas-based Tenagra, the auction took off Dec. 31 as the world spun
into the Year 2000.

But, even then, de Jager told Newsbytes that he suspected his high-
profile campaigning to raise awareness for the Y2K issue had made
him a target for pranksters. "There are a lot of people out there
who would love to jerk my chain," he said.

The current record for the price known to be paid for a domain name
is $7.5 million, paid by California-based eCompanies for the
Internet address Business.com. The owners of Year2000.com won't
know if they might still break that record until after the validity
of the next-highest bids have been determined.

Said Pursglove: "When an auction closes down and there is a winning
bid, each person is then notified by e-mail from eBay that the
auction is over, and the winning bidders and the seller are
encouraged to exchange e-mail. Apparently, it was during that
series of exchanges that the seller became concerned and contacted
us. We looked into it... and came to the same conclusion that the
seller had - that this was an individual who was not going to honor
his bid."

High-profile hoaxes, however, make good headlines and have included
the case of the 13-year-old New Jersey boy who placed bogus bids
totaling more than $3.1 million in April of this year, including
offering $500,000 for a Van Gogh painting, $1.2 million for a
Florida medical office, and $900,000 for a piece of antique
furniture.

The Year 2000 Information Center and more information on the
domain-name auction can be found at http://www.year2000.com.

Reported by Newsbytes.com, http://www.newsbytes.com.