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Online auction giant eBay Inc. is being accused by the Environmental Protection Agency of looking the other way for years as its customers sold illegal pesticides and hundreds of thousands of devices that allow drivers to bypass the emission controls on their vehicles.
In a civil complaint filed in federal court in Brooklyn on Wednesday, the EPA alleged that eBay violated a long list of environmental laws by allowing for the sale of numerous banned chemicals and devices on its platforms.
“EBay’s sale of emission control defeat devices, pesticides, and other unsafe products poses unacceptable risks to our communities disproportionately impacted by environmental and health hazards,” said Breon Peace, the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, who filed the suit on behalf of the EPA.
Investigators with the EPA say they watched for years as sellers freely posted the so-called defeat devices or tuners for sale on eBay
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The devices allow drivers to essentially switch off their vehicles’ factory-installed emissions control systems and continue to operate.
The devices are popular among mostly truck and pickup truck drivers, who believe the control systems inhibit their truck’s performance and make it more costly to operate. Removing the systems, however, can result in trucks producing 300 times more pollution than allowed, the Environmental Protection Agency says.
In all, the EPA says eBay allowed some 343,000 such devices to be sold to buyers in the U.S. since 2019. The EPA also accuses eBay of allowing 23,000 sales of pesticides that are banned in the United States, despite being warned twice by the agency to block such transactions.
Additionally, eBay is accused of allowing thousands of sales of a kind of paint stripper that is also banned for use in the U.S.
In a statement, eBay said it works strenuously to remove prohibited items for sale from its site, and block millions of listings each year, while working with law enforcement agencies to go after such sellers.
“The government’s actions are entirely unprecedented and eBay intends to vigorously defend itself,” the company said.
The EPA’s suit is asking a judge to levy civil penalties against eBay for the alleged violations. eBay’s shares traded down around 2% on Wednesday following the filing of the EPA’s suit.
