bid rigging

[Michelle Dixon]

Has anyone witnessed bid rigging at an auction?

[Jay Hinrichs]

@Michelle Dixon    I think in this context your talking about the local guys that have been going to auctions for years.. they get together before the auction and pay each other money not to bid... In our market is was so blatant for years guys would just negotiate payoffs right in  front of the crier.

I do personally know of a couple of guys in Washington that got caught paying off the crier. How that worked was.

Crier would start a sale.. If there was competing bids he would cancel the sale .. then after all the action was done they would walk around the building together and sell it to the guys for minimum bid and these guys paid the crier off.  both got reported to the DA.. no criminal charges were ever filed but it made it to the papers.. The crier was fired the investor was shunned for years by his church.  Now they are right back at it. But all the deals are done before the sale...

There have been many caught at this and yes the FBI will nail them.. there was a case in NC 10 years or so ago were guys got huge fines and jail time.

basically if your at a sale and two or three bidders are going for the same property and they start whispering to each other then suddenly stop or the property gets sold for 1 dollar over you kind of know some deal was made.

In our market there were many that would just show up with cashiers check's qualify to bid with no intention of buying their only reason for being there was to get the 1 to 2k pay off. And sometimes much more depending on the property.