Penny Auction Pardoo just launched this week. The question was raised in the forum of odd bidding patterns and possibly shill bidding bots on Pardoo.

Curious as to what software Pardoo.com is using? Let’s take a  look at their sourcecode:

 Pardoo’s software, Cactus CMS 3.8 comes from Estonia based software developer DigitalFruit.ee.

Does DigitalFruit.ee sell software with bots?

Digital Fruit calls it the “Intelligent Investment Protector:”

Intelligent Investment Protector (IIP)

“Solution made for site owner protection for initial startup period where bidding level could be lower than expected. IIP tries to replicate human behaviour as closely as possible and making almost impossible to detect as bot.

• There will be 2 main values for revenue control system:
  1) BEP level (break-even point)
  2) MAX level (Max plausible price)
  There is big name pool for Internal bidders (its variable and can be changed by admin). Name pool is always compared against real users to escape situation where Internal and real users do have the same username. Name pool has no bidders amount limit.
  Max level will be used to escape product price rising suspiciously high. Those products can be put on auctions again. If max level is reached and last bidder is Internal bidder then it will be winner even if BEP level is not reached.
  Internal bidders are taken from central “name pool” ~15 per every auction, at least 5 of them will be replaced in every 2 hours. (time is centrally adjustable).
  To simulate real user behaviour Internal bidders make occasional bids before BEP level is reached, otherwise it will look very suspicious if bids from certain users are placed only on 0 time. Real and Internal players’ bids are kept in different tables to escape value mixup.
  IIP has 5 values what define how does it bid: Appearance (how often it will appear in specific auction) , Risk level (how aggressively its playing), Strategy (how often it will bid and how to follow other bidders), Stage (how often player will play in different auctions)
  Price: starting from 1570 EUR” -From DigitalFruit.ee

Investment Protection/autobidding bots/whatever you want to call it is STILL stealing. Notice how Digital Fruit repeatedly assures the purchaser that suspicious behavior will go undetected?

Almost.

Seems pretty fishy wouldn’t you say?

That’s not all.

Pardoo gives us an address for their company  in Miami, Fl:

The IP address of a recent commentator, who left  a good review for Pardoo  also comes from Miami, FL.

Mere Coincidence? Nope.

We have proof that a recent comment that was placed on our first Pardoo post  is a shill/fake comment. It comes from the same IP (Internet Protocol) Address as is detected in an E-mail from customerservice@Pardoo.com!

See where it says Originating IP and received from Oscar, Oscar Henao is the CEO of Pardoo.com, New Developments LLC.

Looks like Pardoo aka Julietn is the one who won the PSPgo, makes you wonder what else Pardoo has won.

The timer on the current Sony Vaio auction was acting funny too, it went from 1 to 0 and back up to 1 again before someone overbid Warrenkg on autobidder, (a user seen on other penny auctions). The auction paused at 1 am and just went active now.

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