At that point you're starting to wonder why no one has tried to build a corporation around this, and unsurprisingly, the online auction site Swoopo appears to be exactly that. More surprisingly, they seem to have gone bankrupt last year, suggesting that maybe H.L. Mencken was wrong and someone has gone broke underestimating people's intelligence.

Just as you posted this, a commercial came on in the other room for Quibids. Which is like this, except that instead of being a pay all auction, submitting a bid costs 60 cents while the 'price' goes up by 5 or 10 cents. Eg, a laptop that 'gets won' for $75.00 will have made $975 for Quibids ($900 for 150 bids, and $75 for the final price).

Basically, somebody saw Swoopo and figured they went bankrupt because they weren't underhanded enough.

Edit: Actually on further looking it appears Swoopo did the same thing with paying for bids. So, the only news is that Swoopo had a horcrux and Quibids is it's reincarnated form.