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Dumb crooks and stupid people breaking the law have always been an interesting concept to me. Being a law abiding citizen, maybe I don’t fully understand how the criminal mind works…but if you’re going to do something illegal or wrong, wouldn’t your first priority be not getting caught?

Enter Stupid Ebay Listing for This Week: A Typed Criminal Confession

This seller did something illegal. He wants to “get it off his chest”…while at the same time hopefully raising enough money for his family in case he should be hauled off to jail.

Now, not being a law expert or detective of any sorts (Though I was a big fan of Encyclopedia Brown as a kid!), I am pretty sure that eBay has everyone’s name and physical address – meaning it would be very easy for them to find out who he is and get that information. Even if that is bogus, I’m pretty sure they could trace the IP… (If I have IP tracing on Best of Stupid, I would think a larger, more important site like eBay would as well!)

So if this in itself is pretty dumb, it gets better. The guy did not put any minimum bid or reserve on the auction. I think he was hoping for at least a few thousand dollars – the current bid of $25 would likely not even take care of dinner for his family!

It’s a weird auction. I’m surprised eBay hasn’t questioned it or reported it to authorities, since they are pretty uptight about illegal things for sale on there, and while I guess selling a confession isn’t illegal (is it?), one would think it would certainly be cause for an investigation.

Since eBay only keeps listings for a certain period of time, I won’t link directly to it, but you can click here to search for Auction # 300251265102 to find it.

The big question of course is what do you think he did? My guess would be fraud or maybe he broke a dumb law that’s been around since 1885 that’s not enforced anymore. I don’t think someone would really do this if they were fully guilty of anything major, would they?