product, sells it online via his own Amazon store for $9.99. Later, he finds out his product is mysteriously being sold very frequently on eBay for $15.99.
The order ships via his Amazon store directly to the Ebay Purchaser, while the Middleman did not have to deal with any of the logistics and made $5 profit.
The Middleman software tools, which automate and optimize the product search, percentage increase, product posting, and cash collection process are essentially what those Pyramid schemes do.

Here are the raw links if my shortened ones didnt work.
Article - https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/278622
Podcast - http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/09/14/493810206/episode-724-cat-scam