In what is really an odd case, Shawn Hogan who was the top Ebay affiliate marketer, along with being a top Google Adsense earner got nailed for defrauding Ebay.
Business Insider the story,
Shawn Hogan, the CEO of a successful online marketing company called Digital Point Solutions, was sentenced to five months in federal prison for his role in defrauding eBay of an alleged $28 million in online marketing fees.
eBay had secretly cooperated with the FBI since June 2006 to root out affiliate marketers whose success was a bit too good to be true. eBay had even created an online sting operation, called “Trip Wire,” to monitor the traffic Hogan was sending.
eBay initially alleged that Hogan had rigged eBay’s system so that it falsely credited him for sales he did not generate. He did it by seeding unknowing users with hundreds of thousands of bits of tracking code, or “cookies.” If any of those people bought something on eBay, the code signaled to eBay that Hogan should get a cut of the sale — even though he had done nothing to promote eBay.