Ebay's biggest troll unmasked: Man who outbids all customers then refuses to pay and leaves bad reviews is outed as loner who rarely leaves his house
By Daily Mail Reporter
An internet troll who harassed successful sellers on eBay in a bid to put them out of business has been exposed after years of abuse.
Charles 'Chuck' Fitch, from Canton, Michigan, is said to be the man behind the mask who calls himself Ebayisajoke and harasses not only the ecommerce website and PayPal but also those who use it.
A television reporter in Detroit, Michigan, hired private investigators to track down the man who targeted individual customers, sending them a torrent of threatening abuse.
They found him living in an apartment in the commuter town of Canton, but when they confronted Mr Fitch, an obese bachelor who appears to live by himself and stay inside most of the day, he did not deny accusations that he was Ebay's worst troll.
Ebayisajoke, who has his own YouTube channel, dedicates his time to trying to 'expose' the internet auction site, accusing it of various crimes and wrongdoings, and talking on camera - hidden by a ghoulish Guy Fawkes mask - about how sellers should use alternative sites.
Using voice alteration software to help keep his identity hidden, he also uses his films to accuse sellers on eBay of malpractice. It is believed Ebayisajoke began his abuse, much of which is found on his blog ebayblows.org, after he was shut down by the site for breaking their rules.
TV reporter Rob Wolchek, who tracked him down, told MailOnline the scale of Ebayisajoke's trolling stretched back several years and had been targeted at victims right across America and as far as the UK.
He said: 'He has allegedly been a suspect in many trolling cases in many different forums for the last few years. I think he has been doing this for years and years and years.
'There was someone from England who posted online that he had been having some kind of a war with this guy.'
One of the troll's targets is the successful eBay seller Joe DeMarco, who expanded his Detroit hubcab shop Hubcaps Joe's into a thriving online business. Mr DeMarco, of Oradell, NJ, became so good at selling online, he even produced videos showing other people how to do it.
According to My Fox Detroit's Wolchek, Ebayisajoke decided to target Mr DeMarco, claiming he abused eBay's Significantly Not As Described buyer's claim, which is said to let users get a free refund on anything they buy if it is not what they were expecting.
In one online rant, Ebayisajoke said: 'I'm going to ruin you in every conceivable manner. First I'm going to target your eBay account...'
In another, he says: 'You are going to lose your business and I'm going to be sitting back, laughing about it.'
Mr DeMarco told My Fox Detroit: 'He is sick; he is actually sick in the head.'
Wolchek, who was the first reporter to unmask the serial troll, says Ebayisajoke's method is to target small business owners, outbid everyone else and then refuse to pay, so that the seller's sale fell through.
He would also then give the seller a bad review, something sellers on eBay, where reputation is everything, fear above all.
Investigators hired by Wolchek identified the troll as Charles 'Chuck' Fitch, and after days of watching him leave his apartment only to buy lunch at Subway or to hit Walmart, the reporter confronted him after he went to the cinema by himself.
Wolchek approached the man and put it to him that he was the man behind Ebayisajoke, a claim Fitch, who got into his truck and drove away, did not refute.
According to theDailyDot.com, Fitch seemed more concerned with his online persona, writing afterwards: 'As far as Ebayisajoke is concerned they didn’t expose anything and everything he was doing online was in fact legal.'
Mr DeMarco is said to have reported the troll to the FBI.
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