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After making the discovery, Appelson -- who works for the Caribbean Conservation Corp. in Gainesville, Fla., -- contacted eBay and Bob Snow, a special agent with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife office near San Francisco.

"Quite frankly, we weren't aware of the volume of turtle products," says Snow, who is one of the two agents responsible for investigating wildlife smuggling in the San Francisco Bay Area. In the past year, Snow has spent an increasing amount of his time at work surfing eBay, identifying or investigating roughly 300 auctions involving items prohibited by the Endangered Species Act.

Small as that figure may seem, Snow sees evidence that the problem is growing: a leopard skin here, a black rhino foot there.

Perhaps the most unseemly item that has surfaced was posted on April 12 with the subject line: "frozen baby white tiger." The description posted by the seller reported that the tiger in question was a stillborn offspring from the brood of Las Vegas entertainers Siegfried and Roy, who incorporate endangered white tigers of India into their nightly act at the Mirage. (The tiger actually came from a Las Vegas breeder with no connection to the famous illusionists, according to federal authorities.) The tiger sold for $750 to a buyer in Little Rock, Ark., before an agent from U.S. Fish and Wildlife intervened.

EBay has already banned all trade in wildlife on its site, and it is anxious to stop these illicit auctions -- many of which are prohibited under the 1973 Endangered Species Act, which forbids the sale of listed species across state lines. But those efforts may be complicated by the company's desire to remain a laissez-faire virtual flea market.

At any given time, eBay hosts approximately three million auctions, with roughly 400,000 new items and $8 million in trades executed every day. EBay makes no effort to screen those new auctions in advance. With 7.7 million registered users, the eBay community has a population larger than New York.

The site benefits from its hands-off approach in two ways. First, because the auctioneer doesn't vouch for any of the items on the site and doesn't knowingly participate in any sale, it's hard to hold eBay responsible for any criminal traffic that might make its way onto the site. Second, this strategy allows eBay to sell far more items than it could if each sale was authenticated and scrutinized. And why would a company like eBay want to apply the brakes to a gravy train that delivers roughly $500,000 in commissions every day?

That doesn't mean eBay isn't concerned about wildlife trafficking, says Rob Chestnut, a former federal prosecutor hired by eBay to crack down on illegal auctions and reduce fraud on the site. "It's bad for business," he says, arguing that the publicity damage to the publicly traded company far outweighs the money eBay receives in commissions on auctions involving illegal booty. (The total estimated bidding value of the Jan. 6 turtle cache, for example, was only $4,000.)

And this isn't the first brush the San Jose, Calif., company has had with bad publicity. EBay received a lot of press last September when it stopped an auction involving a human kidney that was set to be sold for $5.7 million. But the recent discovery of the sea turtle and tiger sales underscores a continuing problem for the Internet's premiere bazaar: The site has become a popular refuge for illegal wildlife transactions.

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