Using shills for any purpose is a felony in licensed auctions in almost every state. Many states are seriously looking at applying their auctioneer licensing laws to ebay and ebay sellers in their states because of various abuses that ebay has let proliferate. In North Carolina they already have legal opinions that say their current auctioneer laws apply to ebay sellers. All they have to do is decide to apply the law. They will probably create a special class of on-line auctioneer license before doing so.

Let problems fester and they do nothing except get worse.