Most states have laws governing the conduct of auctions, eBay technically is not an auction house nor an auctioneer; eBay merely provides the venue for auctions to take place.

Among the complaints that the FTC received about auction fraud, the two most numerous were cases in which consumers never received the item they won or received an item that was substantially different from what was advertised. However, the agency started to see new trends last year, such as shill bidding, where a seller or his or her friends bid on an auction to drive up the bid price. The sellers of the Diebenkorn painting are accused of shill bidding.

My point is how can you be accused of something such as shill bidding if there is no law? I would assume it would fall under internet fraud.