This is probably a kid screwing around and the people bidding on the auction are probably his friends. I’m sure he’ll cancel the auction or has given eBay false payment info and they’ll never get any money. He’ll eventually get booted only to reappear later under a different username. With 10+ million auctions going on at any given time, eBay just doesn’t have the time to closely examine every auction. I’ve seen these types of auctions come and go.
On real auctions that have bids in the millions (or even thousands), they usually make bidders get pre-approval by calling a phone line and doing some checks. Tends to keep the bored teens from bidding.
It is an interesting question though. I can pick any real auction at random that’s closing soon, and bid $10,000 on it. eBay would instantly bill the guy for his closing fee, even though he has no chance of getting the payment from me. The seller would have no chance to kill the auction. Must be a pain in the ass to resolve.
The item was an old PS2 game, a really crappy one. The description went roughly like this:
"this is a game i found in the dumpster behind my apartment. it’s really scratched and doesn’t work. i lost the book and the case. my cat peed on it. "
There were 4 bids, and the price was above 99 million dollars before it got shut down.