Despite his best efforts his real nature shone through from time to time, so even though he was at his best behaviour trying to maintain his minimum 98% average so as to keep his powerseller status, he still scammed people occasionally during his two quiet years prior to the big scam.
That would normally yield enough negative feedback to bring his feedback below the desired 98% minimum level. But that didn't happen. How is this possible? By a mechanism called mutual withdrawal of a rating.
Alisher either scammed or attempted to scam people but somehow he was able through the process of rating withdrawal to avoid the negatives. In a specific case, in the thick of the big scam, ebay withdraws the negative based on a technicality, even though the buyer appears astute enough to have seen through Alisher's scamming plot. That's really ironic! How Alisher managed the rest of the rating withdrawals is obviously a matter of speculation. But that doesn't really matter. What matters is that the process of ratings withdrawal was manipulated by Alisher71. Ebay's inaction and/or ineptitude didn't help either. All in all ten ratings were thus withrawn. By doing the math, given that total positive feedback for Alisher was 509, ten extra negatives would pull it down by approximately 2%. His dream of becoming a powerseller would be gone. But he prevailed by manipulating the ratings withdrawal system.
Yet the recipients of his negative feedback are still suffering from it! Ebay hasn't withdrawn Alisher's negative, often retaliatory, feedback from his victims to this day.
One can imagine the gall of this guy sitting at the computer sending negative retaliatory feedback to someone for refusing to be his victim and at the same time he and his girlfriend packing everything, (including the computer!), for the big getaway!
Regardles, ebay's feedback policies need serious reform. What also needs serious reform is the speed with which ebay must remove retaliatory feedback from the victims of proven scammers like Alisher71! Ebay can also consider awarding people that saw through scams a medal instead of a negative feedback. Especially since ebay was actually pulling by itself many of Alisher's auctions as early as November 30th, without warning the rest of the ebay community, contrary to its moral duty!
Another thing that needs serious reform is the threshold of becoming a powerseller. Alisher became a powerseller with less than 493 transactions. That's too young to become a powerseller. A virtual baby compared to people with thousands, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of transactions. If the threshold were higher, say in the thousands, chances are Alisher would have gotten tired long before he became a powerseller. And either he would have been kicked out of ebay or he would have learned the virtues of honesty. Fat chance though the latter may have been.
