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E!
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Haddonfield teen bids away $3.2 million of parents' money on eBay
By George Berkin
The Star-Ledger
4/28/99
Andrew Tyler isn't really a computer nerd, his mother says.
Yes, the 13-year-old Camden County boy is fond of keyboard games and regularly sends e-mails to friends in Seattle, but his computer habits have not been anything out of the ordinary for today's computer-literate teens.
Until this week, that is. Thanks to some fancy keystrokes, the Haddonfield youngster has suddenly become famous from Florida to Canada much to the chagrin of his unsuspecting parents.
In recent weeks, Andrew used his parents' computer account with eBay, a San Jose, Calif.-based online trading company, to go on a $3.2 million Internet spending spree, according to the National Post, a national Canadian newspaper based in Ontario.
Using the Internet, Andrew submitted the winning bids on a $1.2 million medical center in Jacksonville, Fla., a Van Gogh sketch, a 1971 Corvette convertible and a $400,000 bedroom suite that once belonged to Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada's first prime minister, the newspaper reported yesterday in a front-page story.
Andrew made the purchases after he obtained his parents' eBay password, eBay spokeswoman Jennifer Chu told Reuters.
Officials with eBay told the National Post on Monday that they had suspended Andrew's account. His bids were subsequently canceled.
'We're just horrified that he would do such a thing," Andrew's mother, Ingrid, said in a telephone interview last night. "We're not rolling in bucks. I don't know if he decided it was a game."
For now, Mrs. Tyler added, it's back to pen and paper for the overreaching teenage technophile.
'He's not going to get on the Internet anymore," she said. |
