It has been reported that a 13 year-old has used his school"s Internet connection to spend a total of about $1.4m on a friend"s eBay account. Purchases included a helicopter, jet aircraft, motorbike and pickup truck. His school and parents weren"t at all happy to hear about his expenditure.
The alarm was raised when the person whose account he was using (a friend"s mother) was contacted with a bill for a $1.1m helicopter. No charges were brought against the impulse shopper but his school, Beaver Middle School in Ohio, has been considering punishment.
Now dubbed the teenage "Rambo" by silicon.com, this young spender started his spree on 24th May and the largest purchases he made were the helicopter ($1.1m) and jet (which he won the bid for at $199,000). The woman who owned the eBay account cancelled the expensive bill as soon as she found out about the unplanned shopping.
With products and services of such high value on eBay this is hardly surprising. Recently the online auction has also had the dot-com wife, Kay Hammond, for £250,000 and a restored Spitfire for £1.25m. A £25 coffee machine, which was modified by a Cambridge University researcher to allow computer monitoring of how full it was, was also sold for £3350 to a German company recently.