forcing StarSoccer to bid BTC63
Did Gar255 put a gun to his head? No one
forced the bidders to do anything.
Having an alt that artificially raises the bid price is similar to a secret reserve price in an auction. There's nothing inherently wrong with it except that Garr255 should have warned bidders that he might do it. I rank his actions there as "a bit shady," though he handled the fallout badly (due to inexperience, I suppose).
In any case, alts aren't against forum rules, and scammer tags are typically only given when an explicit agreement is broken. Garr255 never promised not to bid on his own auctions. He never even promised to honor the results of the auctions. Without contracts that say otherwise, auctions are only devices to assist in price negotiations.
OK, cool. So it's totally OK to have bidding sockpuppets on these forums. You still deserve the trust of the mods and admins if you have sockpuppets that pose as independent third parties that artificially inflate trust on your business ventures or raise the price of you auctions.
Just FYI, sockpuppeting is considered a serious issue when money of third parties is involved, just check wikipedia and you will see there were convictions and serious consecuences for many individuals engaged in sockpuppeting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sockpuppet_(Internet)
The fact that the forum allows sockpuppeting to artificially build trust when business transactions are involved or to inflate auction prices seems totally wrong to me, as it's a clear demonstration of untrustworthy behaviour in my book, I have to admit I'm utterly disappointed but it's your forum, so you make the rules and we either accept them or we leave. Duly noted.