Power Seller, No Tickets

Massachusetts, early 2005. Michael R. Deppe, a 21-year-old who was already facing nineteen state larceny counts for selling Rolex watches online that never arrived (27 transactions, roughly $115,000, packages stuffed with crumpled newspaper or worthless baseball cards), had been released on condition that he do no business by computer. He teamed up with William Englehart in a company called Aceprosports, selling sports merchandise through eBay and PayPal and earning eBay's 'power seller' badge. About two weeks before the February 2005 Super Bowl, Aceprosports began selling tickets to the game that the partners did not have. Nearly $263,000 poured in. Englehart made a few refunds, but the vast majority of customers lost their deposits and never saw a ticket. A federal grand jury charged Deppe with wire and mail fraud over both the Rolex scheme and the Super Bowl scheme. He pleaded guilty to the ten Rolex counts but took the Super Bowl counts to a jury. His defence was that Englehart was the real fraudster: Englehart handled many sales, controlled the company bank account and cash flow, and, Deppe said, forged receipts to make it look as though Deppe had walked off with the proceeds. The government's case was the mirror image: Deppe had falsely assured Englehart he had a legitimate source of Super Bowl tickets, then collected the buyers' money for himself. The trial ran seven days.