I did a little digging myself into the featured seller account mentioned initially. These featured pages seem to all be Oliver Hoger's:
http://www.namejet.com/featuredauctions/6ifd5lvs
http://www.namejet.com/featuredauctions/8fyd9zfl
http://www.namejet.com/featuredauctions/9rev0pcj
So I can also check which auctions run through those featured pages were bid on by "seek" which is Oliver's known NJ alias.
Take a look at this (click for larger):
Auctioned by Oliver, bid on by Oliver above the min back order, and confirmed by WHOIS history to have been owned by him at the time.
So I dug deeper. It turns out for the first featured seller account above, user "seek" bid in 18 of those auctions and was the runner-up in three. For his second featured seller account he bid in 17 auctions and was the runner-up in four. For his third featured seller account he bid in 46 auctions and was the runner up in one. Didn't win any though, that's some fancy shilling! I can provide proof of all this if you need more than the above screenshot.
Here's where it gets REALLY interesting:
IAOR.com | Ended 2016-12-13 & Re-auctioned 2017-01-17
http://www.namejet.com/Pages/Auctions/StandardDetails.aspx?auctionid=3866603<=reports
http://www.namejet.com/Pages/Auctions/StandardDetails.aspx?auctionid=3879552<=reports
Seek bid in the first auction which is how it got my attention. Picked up from Domain Capital around April 15, 2015. Switches to privacy a few months later as part of a move to eNom (but the NS never changes) and is then auctioned by Oliver. Then a month after the first auction WHOIS switches back to his name, is re-auctioned, and then stays in his name another four months before he sells it to another domainer. The same alias won it both times and it never changed hands.
Auction doesn't show as cancelled, so this could be an example where he won by accident and ate the commission, and warrants further exploration. Checking "winner8888" this alias has bid in 318 of Oliver's first featured account (a quarter of all of them!), was the winner in 6 of them, and was the runner up in 17 of them. In fact, all six of Oliver's auctions that winner8888 won are still owned by Oliver, or were owned by him months after the auction completed successfully before being re-sold:
http://www.namejet.com/Pages/Auctions/StandardDetails.aspx?auctionid=3880556<=reports
http://www.namejet.com/Pages/Auctions/StandardDetails.aspx?auctionid=3879552<=reports
http://www.namejet.com/Pages/Auctions/StandardDetails.aspx?auctionid=3866603<=reports
http://www.namejet.com/Pages/Auctions/StandardDetails.aspx?auctionid=3864440<=reports
http://www.namejet.com/Pages/Auctions/StandardDetails.aspx?auctionid=3862385<=reports
http://www.namejet.com/Pages/Auctions/StandardDetails.aspx?auctionid=3862353<=reports
What are the odds that all six domains won were paid for (we know because it wasn't cancelled and the user wasn't banned) but the winner never once updated the WHOIS? I'm not a betting man, but I'd be willing to wager that winner8888 is (one of) Oliver's shill account(s). So I spot checked a bunch of other domains won by this account, and all that I checked had WHOIS in Oliver's name. Seems this account belongs to Oliver, unless I'm missing something.
So I checked Oliver's two other featured auction pages to see what kind of damage winner8888 is doing. This account bid in 286 auctions run by his second featured account, won one, and was the runner-up in 14. And it bid in 217 auctions for his third featured account, won two, and was the runner-up in three.
In total it seems that he has bid in at least 902 of his own auctions from two different aliases, and that's just the accounts we know about.
Anyway, it's harder to do this kind of deep dive for the Booth brothers since they don't have their own auction page, and they likely legitimately bid in many of Oliver's auctions since all three guys are into short domains. But let's check.
Bid on by "boothcom":
6ifd5lvs: Bid on four, won one, runner-up in two.
8fyd9zfl: Bid on 0.
9rev0pcj: Bid on 0.
And for "bqdncom":
6ifd5lvs: Bid on eight, won two, runner-up in one.
8fyd9zfl: Bid on 0.
9rev0pcj: Bid on one, runner-up in one.
I blew through all my WHOIS history queries for the month (ouch!) but if anyone wants to look into these 13 auctions to see if any were owned by the Booth brothers at the time they were bidding on them shoot me a PM and I'll get you the list.
EDIT: Someone is running this for me now, no need for further assistance. Thanks.
Time for me to be black-balled, lol
These views are my own, and I'm not speaking on behalf of any company I work for and the respective company owners are not aware of this post. I have to run out for a few hours so might be slow to reply to any follow-up questions.