Heard of the auction/gambling website Swoopo? It runs what are called "dollar auctions"

As a website, this opens up the possibility for malicious bidding by the website owners, in which case it not only does not ship out out the auctioned product, but also pushes up the second-highest price.

Wikipedia says they have 20 million dollars in revenue. Also seems like there is no real reason that competition should drive down the bid prices until it becomes a raffle of sorts. Popularity doesn't really help that much in their case does it?