Celebrity scandal sells well on eBay’s dark side

If you dare to journey far beyond the prim pillars of capitalism — way past the Dow, the Fed and Alan Greenspan’s retirement hammock — you could stumble into one of the darkest, most disturbing corner of the American economy.

Call it the Infamy Emporium. No road map needed. You’ll find it with a just well-chosen keyword and a click. On the vast pages of eBay, badness is bubbling up all over.

There, amid the clutter of Michael Vick “dogfighter” license plates, Lindsay Lohan “I don’t want to go to Rehab” T-shirts and Chris Benoit action figures, a morbid niche market is eternally fueled by the latest scandals and villains.

Need an Osama Bin Laden whiskey flask? It’s yours for just $11.99. Craving a car once owned by NFL troublemaker Pacman Jones? Sorry, that 2005 Chrysler Crossfire just got snapped up for about $20,000.

Feeding off the fumes of a white-hot celebrity culture, built on the crumbs of America’s intense appetite for gossip, this strange segment of eBay is surging like never before. It’s a bazaar of the bizarre, driven by sellers’ lust for a quick buck and buyers’ hopes for some notoriety of their own. Stroll through the cyber-aisles: Here’s the airline boarding pass used by Paris Hilton after she left jail and jetted to Hawaii ($152); here’s the suit worn by O.J. Simpson the day he was found not guilty of double murder ($1,750). (The O.J. suit was withdrawn from sale recently when it failed to reach the minimum price of $35,000.)

Why are so many consumers so interested in owning a piece of the dark side?

“Because it has an air about it,” said Bruce Fromong, seller of the O.J. suit, which comes with jacket, pants, shirt and tie. The shirt collar has a blood stain where Simpson nicked himself shaving that morning, Oct. 3, 1995. The jacket has a makeup smudge left by Simpson’s sister during a post-verdict hug. Fromong said he has been trying to sell the suit for its owner, Simpson’s former agent Mike Gilbert, who got the ensemble as a gift from the ex-NFL star.

CNBC video Reebok suspends sales of Vick jerseys July 27: Reebok has decided to immediately suspend selling Michael Vick NFL products. NBC's John Yang reports. CNBC

“John Dillinger. Bonnie and Clyde. O.J. I don’t care who you’re talking about, there’s a large interest there,” said Fromong, who deals in sports memorabilia. “Everybody has their own opinions (about the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman). I wasn’t there. If he did it, someday he’s got to stand in front of his Maker and atone for it. If he didn’t do it, look what we’ve done to him.”

And in the meantime?

“Well, right or wrong, love it or hate it, this suit has historic significance,” Fromong said. “This was the trial of the century.”

Of course, America has been a caldron of entrepreneurialism since the days Benjamin Franklin cooked up the lightning rod, wood-burning stove and bifocals. EBay, launched in 1995, has erupted into a massive, global marketplace where 241 million registered users trade more than $1,840 worth of goods every second, from the conventional to the kooky. At this confluence, capitalism has sprouted a thicket of weird branches: The Web site’s sellers in recent days have offered everything from a sheet of ripped paper to a bag of Funyuns.

And then there’s that darker, creepier back room where you can buy pieces of infamy: a James Earl Ray autographed prison meal ticket ($225), a handwritten letter penned by wrestler and family killer Chris Benoit ($100), the domain name LindsayLohanBusted.com ($9.99).

Of course, with many of these items, buyers will need to beware of possible hoaxes. While eBay says it will terminate accounts of users who post "false, inaccurate (or) misleading" content, it also does not guarantee the truth or accuracy of listings.

Still, the site is heavily self-policed by the users. And buyers have the ability to e-mail questions to the sellers.

When describing an item, some sellers write a few sentences to explain how they obtained it, laying out a chain of ownership. In the case of Simpson's suit, for example, the seller explained how it was obtained and pointed out blood and sweat stains said to contain Simpson's DNA.

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