EBay Bars Seller of $135,000 Painting

May 11 2000

SAN FRANCISCO - The man who sparked an art world controversy by accepting a $135,805 bid for a painting he allegedly found at a garage sale was suspended by the online auction company eBay Wednesday for seeking to secretly boost the sales price.

Sacramento lawyer Ken Walton, who listed the painting under the name "Golfpoorly," had used a different alias to place a $4,500 bid on his own lot, a practice known as "shilling" aimed at prompting bidding wars among other participants, eBay said.

Walton told Reuters the shill bid was inadvertent and denied trying to manipulate the auction process for the painting, which many bidders apparently hoped was an undiscovered work by the late modernist master Richard Diebenkorn.

He said the sale was genuine, and that he was willing to go through with an offer to have the painting assessed by an independent expert. "Under any circumstances I still intend to have an expert look at the painting," he said.

The green and orange painting eventually drew three bids of more than $135,000 before attracting a top bid from Dutch art collector Rob Keereweer of $135,805.

EBay said, however, that it later had found that one of the some 95 bids on the painting had been placed by Walton himself using the alias "grecescu" on April 30.

"The bid in question was well below the final sale price and may not have materially affected the bidding," the eBay statement said. "However, eBay's policy in these circumstances is to void the results of the sale and suspend the seller, which it has done."

Walton said he had inadvertently broken eBay's regulations when he placed a bid for a friend who "hoped to get in on the action" surrounding the painting. "I placed a bid for him with one of my own eBay accounts not realizing that this was against eBay policy," Walton said.

Walton said that he had not yet spoken with Keereweer about the deal, which both sides agreed Tuesday should be put on hold pending an expert assessment of the painting's worth. "The buyer and I have had nothing but good interaction," he said.

Walton added that he was keeping close watch over the painting, which he has refused to let anyone see following the outcome of the auction. "It is being stored in, I guess, a safe location. I don't live in a secure house, people know what is going on, and people are hanging out on my doorstep. I don't want people messing with my things," he said The painting, advertised as a "great big wild abstract art painting", bore some resemblance to works produced in the 1950's by Diebenkorn, one of California's best known artists. Diebenkorn paintings have sold for well over $1 million in recent sales.

Walton made no reference to Diebenkorn in his description of the work. But he did include a number of hints -- including a close-up photo of a hole in the canvas near a Diebenkorn-style "RD" signature -- which helped to prompt the furious bidding.

He also said he had purchased the work at a garage sale in Berkeley, where Diebenkorn had worked in the 1950s.

Walton's tale began to unravel late Tuesday when he admitted "making up" elements of his story about the painting, including the allegation that the hole in the canvas had been caused by his child's tricycle. He is, in fact, single.

Kevin Pursglove, an eBay spokesman, said the company had found evidence of one "shill" bid in the auction, and that such bids are almost always placed by sellers seeking to inflate the price of their offerings.

"Shilling is one of the biggest concerns that our users have because it gets to the very integrity of the bidding process," Pursglove said. "When we hear about it, we move very fast."

He said that, conforming with eBay policy, Walton would be suspended from using the service for 30 days, and that repeat offenses could be punishable by a lifetime ban.

Copyright 1999, Reuters News Service