Pennybiddr.com Alleged Shill Bidders

“613Bid,” one of our forum members, has just investigated penny auction site PennyBiddr.com and requested we post his findings here. It looks like he may be right about this one, thank you 613bid, we appreciate your diligence!!

We already know that the PHPPennyAuction.com penny auction script has bot bidders programmed in (more on this coming soon- this is NOT to say that all penny auctions using this script are using bots) and it looks like PennyBiddr.com is quite possibly using that script.

Here’s what our reader/member sent us:

“I have done some in-depth research on pennybiddr.com and what I have found is very concerning. I was questioning the legitimacy of this site, and found some VERY suspicious activity on two auctions I tried to participate in on Friday night, I would like to share all of my detective work on pennybiddr.com:


I examined a sample of 90 closed auctions, the approximate retail value of the items sold on the site amounts to $21,500. These same 90 auctions had a total final auction price of $64.52. This amounts to 6452 bids placed. At an average cost of $0.76 per bid, this means the income for pennybiddr.com was $4903. This yields a net loss of over $16,000 for pennybiddr.com
There are now well over 400 closed auctions on pennybiddr.com. It has been in operation since November 2009. Yet there is not 1 single testimonial on the website. Some “users” have won 52” LCD tvs for pennies, yet no one has given them a testimonial.

Using www.whois.domaintools.com I discovered that pennybiddr.com is registered to
Kanwal Singh

3809 S 337th St
Federal Way, Washington 98001

After doing a reverse lookup on www.whitepages.com for this address online, I discovered that there are 3 people registered at this address, with the following phone number 1-253-874-1073. Kulbir Singh, Romme P Singh, and Sukhjinder Singh. Since these 3 people have the last name, and live at the same address, it can be assumed that these 3 people are related. I actually called the number and spoke to Romme Singh. He told me he was the brother of Kanwal Singh, the owner of the website. I asked Romme if Kanwal lived in the same house, and he replied – NO.

Below is a screencap from the terms and conditions page on pennybiddr.com

After searching on Facebook. It becomes apparent that Romme P Singh is a fan of the PennyBiddr.com facebook page.

After doing a search of Romme’s Facebook friends, I discovered Laly Singh. It is unclear if Laly Singh is related to Kanwal Singh.

Laly is also a fan of PennyBiddr:

After viewing the Facebook Wall of Laly Singh, I discovered that on November 25th 2009 at 11:59pm Laly posted the following on Facebook: (Please note this has since been removed from both Laly Singh’s Facebook feed, AND the review tab on the pennybiddr.com facebook fan page.) I believe Kanwal is trying to cover his tracks.

After searching through all of the closed auction on pennybiddr.com there was only 1 auction for Call of Duty that ended at $0.22. The winner of that auction was user skfmips, and the last bid was placed on Nov 16th 2009 at 23:57:20. See next screenshot.


Now, looking at the screenshot below shows that there is another user, who is currently bidding on the Haiti Red Cross Auction. The user name is lalysingh.

It is apparent that Laly Singh has 2 accounts on pennybiddr.com. One is skfmips according to his facebook post. And the other is clearly his name lalysingh.
This is a clear violation of the terms and conditions in the next screenshot.

Additionally if you view this screenshot of Google’s Cache, you can see that on Alexa, there is one rating for pennybiddr.com. The username who wrote the review … none other than Laly Singh:

Now someone has gone in and edited this review on Alexa, and changed the username from Laly Singh to Facebook User in the screenshot below. I believe this to be more evidence of Kanwal Singh trying to cover his tracks for unethical penny auction business practices:

This is all the research I have done. PAW please post on your main page.”

Also, it looks like PennyBiddr.com may be using the usernames of bidders from other sites for their bots:

For example, techie159 is a bidder on Bidray.com, we have reason to believe that techie159 is not a real bidder (more on this in the near future) :

We are just posting this as a warning that we believe there may be bot/shill bidders on the penny auction site PennyBiddr.com.

Thanks to “613Bid” for providing us with this information.


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27 comments… add one
  • E-Shopper January 18, 2010, 7:40 am

    Ohh techie159 is the bot Tracie_an-Capman found BidRay using…remember?

    techie159 isn't a real bidder for either site, its the built in name of a bot.

    Reply
  • auctionwatcher January 18, 2010, 7:46 am

    We're not 100% sure though that that is a bot on Bidray… :-/

    Reply
  • 613Bid January 18, 2010, 10:10 am

    It should now also be noted that on pennybiddr.com Kanwal Singh has removed the $0.22 win on the COD game, and they also removed the entire Charity Auction for Haiti Relief efforts.

    Basically he is trying to hide all this stuff. Too bad for him screenshots do not lie.

    Reply
  • Snagoo January 18, 2010, 7:26 pm

    Wow, excellent research and investigation 613Bid. Nice work!

    Reply
  • caveninit January 19, 2010, 8:50 am

    BUSTED!!! Just can't get anything past PAW!!! Nice job!! Thanks!!

    Reply
  • caveninit January 19, 2010, 8:51 am

    Hey 613Bid….also wanted to thank you for taking the time to investigate this site. We all appreciate it!

    Reply
  • ndn0521 January 19, 2010, 11:06 am

    Awesome find from both 613Bid & PAW!! Way to go guys!!!:)

    Reply
  • dzignr_tastz January 20, 2010, 5:22 pm

    Good finds, 613Bid! 😉

    And rest assured… you're RIGHT on the money. Firthermore, if Kanwal Singh is scrambling to remove auctions and change testimonials, he's really going to havehis hands full trying to cover up everything else that will very soon come to light about his (and several other) websites utilizing the PHPPennyAuction script to defraud their customers.

    Reply
  • Lily Mystere January 21, 2010, 6:58 pm

    Wow. Federal Way is next door. I'm going to do a drive-by on Saturday and take a pic.

    I'm really disappointed to find a Sikh cheating people. So dishonorable.

    Reply
  • Bob January 28, 2010, 3:51 am

    BIG TIME FRAUD for Pennybiddr.com CONSUMERS BEWARE!!!

    Reply
  • PennyPincher January 29, 2010, 11:02 am

    I found techie159's ebay account it holds all of his wins, therefore he(or she) is not a bot.

    Reply
  • SavnOne February 7, 2010, 8:48 am

    I joined pennybiddr.com after doing some penny auction searches. I found that each winner won their prizes at such low prices. This got me concluding that they may not have enough members and therefore people were winning auctions for dirt cheap prices. This is the letter I sent to pennybiddr.com: I just wanted you to know that I am finding your penny auction to be extremely unfair. I noticed one TV had sold for 9 cents. The winner as well as the next highest bidder were using a BidBuddy to bid for them. It doesn’t make any sense that the one person who lost had set his/her BidBuddy to bid only 2 times with a max bid of 8 cents for a 42″ Dynex tv. I set my BidBuddy for a 55″ Samsung LCD and the auction continued for for over 9 hours past the original countdown. A few minutes after I deleted my BidBuddy, the item sells!!! How is that possible when there were 5 new people (within the last 2 mins) who jumped into the bidding war? Despite that, when the timer had 10 sec. left, I tried to place a BID and it displayed “this auction is closed”. I physically watched the timer count down from 5 sec. to END. HOW UNFAIR IS THAT? I feel there is some deceitful activity going on and I plan to pursue this. I paid $162 for bids and I demand a refund. Not only was I unable to bid on the TV while the time was still running down, it happened to me while bidding on a digital camcorder, 100 bid pack, and an IPOD. It is obvious to me that your site is setup so I lose my purchased bids. This is my first experience with pennybiddr and am very disappointed. Please respond at your earliest convenience. Thank you.

    The response I got from pennybiddr.com was an apology with the option to refund the remaining value of my unused bids. I accepted their solution to my problem but have since stopped visiting http://www.pennybiddr.com. I wish I had read this site before buying my bids in the first place. It was an $80 lesson that I learned the hard way. Hopefully others read this. Thanks for having such a site for me to comment on. Good luck and God Bless.

    Reply
  • justin pearce March 11, 2010, 11:20 am

    I have collected the statistical website data listed for PennyBiddr.com that clearly demonstrates the website is using bidding bots to ensure no users win the auctions. I have compared the unique visitor statistics with the # of unique users that bid on the estimated $100,000 of products they claim to auction each day, and it clearly demonstrates the fraudulence of the company. According to webtraffic24.com, PennyBiddr.com received an estimated average of 64 daily visits to their website. According to PennyBiddr.com's auction history, they have more than 64 winners each day. That clearly demonstrates the invalidity of their website. In addition, the estimated dollar amount they auction each 24 hour period on their website is $75,000-$100,000, and the estimated dollar amount they receive through bids on their products in a 24 hour period is $1,000 – $10,000, which depicts their company takes an estimated net $50,000 dollar loss per day, everyday. This means that PennyBiddr.com takes an estimated $9 million dollars loss every 6 months. If, needed, I will provide a more detailed analysis that demonstrates the invalidity of the company. I choose to spend my time to see to it that PennyBiddr.com is shut down as a business, because it is not right for them to take money from innocent people.

    Reply
  • pennybid March 16, 2010, 3:26 am

    phppennyauction.com is the biggest scam ever!no support no replying on emails.and if you complain to much they take your site of!!found the best script around 3rd of the price with all the bells and wistles.

    info [at} max-knowledge.com for details

    Reply
  • Joseph March 21, 2010, 10:44 am

    OMG, I am horrified reading this! Thank god I didn't buy more than 5 bids! My friend questioned the validity because I saw 15 auctions end in 30 mins all under 10 cents! It is disgusting that they do this! They should be shut down! I would suggest people try better auctions sites, like Bidzilla.com(GREAT customer service and they're whole setup is just so much better! Your bids are never wasted) and snagoo.com!

    Reply
  • MarcoPolo April 21, 2010, 6:47 pm

    Looks like they may have moved out to Asia….. this site is at best using identical code to http://www.pennybiddr.com: http://www.netshopperhk.com

    Other potentially incriminating evidence includes lack of contact telephone number, address or even email for customer support.

    Reply
  • John October 4, 2010, 4:32 am

    Good news!

    PennyBiddr have come to an agreement with the Attorney General of Washington state to shut down their site, refund all bidders in full, pay $8,000 to reimburse the Attorney General’s Office for legal costs and the owner is prohibited from using a penny auction site to generate income again:
    http://emailinternetscams.blogspot.com/2010/09/pe

    So if you ever bidded on Pennybiddr get in touch with the AG regarding a refund and if you have been scammed by any other penny auction site contact your Attorney General and the FTC to file complaints.
    https://ftccomplaintassistant.gov/FTC_Wizard.aspx

    Reply
  • kelly September 18, 2012, 4:19 pm

    Hey guys i am in the middle of starting an Auction site and phppennyauctoion.com is on my list of scripts ! wow! anyone now of a reputable software co.

    Thanks
    Kelly@gniwe.com

    Reply
  • kelly September 18, 2012, 4:20 pm

    Sorry , anyone KNOW of a reputable software co. ?

    kelly@gniwe.com

    Reply

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