Is the virginity auction real?

NZPA reports:

Going, going, gone – a New Zealand teenager has auctioned off her virginity to a stranger for over $45,000 to fund her university tuition fees.

The 19-year-old Northland student, who listed her virginity on the ineed.co.nz website under the name `Unigirl’, said the leading bid was “way beyond what I dreamed”.

“Thank you to the more than 30,000 people who viewed my ad and to the more than 1200 offers made,” she posted on the site.

I am a bit sceptical about this. The ineed website is very slow to load at the moment, so I can’t check but off memory it does not show you every bid made, and the winning bid like Trade Me does.

I am sceptical that an auction of sex with a 19 year old girl, even a virgin, would fetch $45,000. Maybe if they had photos up showing a super model, but this was an auction that gave almost no details of the seller.

And 1,200 bids makes me suspicious also. Is there proof of this?

Now maybe it did happen,but I would be less suspicious if it had occurred on Trade Me as you can see winning bids, and their commission structure means that the seller has to pay more money when bids are higher, so they only want genuine ones. Again the ineed site (off memory as it won’t load) charges a flat listing fee I think.

So have any media checked out the veracity of the claims, before reporting them?

UPDATE: Dave at Big News has done what the media did not do, and ring the site owners and as them some questions. He thinks it is a stunt as the offers are all made by e-mail so there is no way to verify the number of bids, or the winning bid.