ABC News reports the rumour that employees of games shops are nabbing pre-ordered Xboxes to flog on eBay. There’s precious little detail and even less evidence, but it’s already being reported as fact.

According to The Inquirer:

This would explain that while there are so many shortages, there seems to be no shortages of high priced machines on ebay.

That’s possible, but there’s another explanation that doesn’t rely on a rumour: as the denizens of Digg.com (who’ve been discussing this rumour) point out, many eBay Xboxes could be fraudulent sellers, and others could be buying boxes from legit eBay sellers and then trying to sell them on. It happens a lot with concert tickets, so I’d be surprised if it isn’t also happening with 360s.