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Seduced by the relative anonymity of the Internet, several University of Florida students have been cashing in on the popularity of Gators football by scalping tickets on eBay, the online auction house.

In September, UF students sold more than 400 Gators tickets on eBay, often for more than 50 times their $6 face value. Under Florida law, it is illegal to sell any ticket for more than $1 over its printed price.

Joe Sharkey, University Police Department public information officer, said that, despite threat of arrest, the lure of easy money has been hard for some students to pass up.

"If you're a student who bought a ticket for six bucks and someone comes up to you and offers you $150, you have a tough choice to make," he said. "But, $6 is printed right on the ticket. If you sell it for anything over $7 it's a misdemeanor."

Although UF police will arrest students caught scalping on university property, they are ignoring ticket sales on eBay, Sharkey said. "I don't know enough about it to know whether it's illegal," he said.

Because it is new, there are many aspects of the Internet that have not yet been regulated, he added.

Bill Cape, a UF freshman majoring in business finance, said he has been taking advantage of the confusion created by the Internet. Cape, who doesn't have season tickets, said in an e-mail interview that he has been acting as a ticket broker for his friends. He said he sells their student tickets and pockets anything above their asking price.

"A lot of kids, unsure of the legality of it, are happy to give up a little profit in order to not deal with the worry and the hassle of selling tickets," he said.

Cape sold four Tennessee tickets on eBay for $150 each. Despite the printed price of $6, Cape said he doesn't believe he broke the law because he sold the tickets "under the guise of the package deal."

"My Tennessee tickets were sold for face value, along with a wallet which the buyer was willing to pay $288 for," Cape said. "What I have always done is sold the tickets for face value and then negotiated the price of the remaining items in the package . . . be it a wallet, a cup, a t-shirt. As far as I know, this is how to do it legally."

Cape isn't the only student who believes a package deal is the safest way to make a lot of money selling student tickets.

On Sept. 15, a UF advertising major posted an eBay ad for a free pair of Florida State tickets to whoever bid the most for a Bic pen. The auction ended Sept. 25, with a high bid of $425. The student, who asked to remain anonymous, said by e-mail that he hoped selling a pen and throwing in a free pair of tickets would protect him from a ticket scalping charge.

"I may, in some ways, be breaking the laws, although I never asked for a certain price," he said. "The money I sold my tickets for have been offers other people have given me. Sometimes a college student needs to sell Gator tickets for exorbitant prices to survive."

John Dalton, assistant dean and director for Student Judicial Affairs at UF, said that the belief that a package deal will circumvent the law is common among students. It is also a myth. He said students always place their eBay ads under sports tickets so it is obvious what the focus of the sale is.

Dalton said many students also falsely believe that starting the bidding at the $6 face value of the ticket negates Florida's anti-scalping law.

"I consider it scalping. I don't know how you get around it," he said. "The thing that most people don't connect is, if it's a violation of law, it's a violation of the student code of conduct."

Dalton said using eBay to scalp Gators tickets has become so popular his understaffed office can't keep up. The week before the Tennessee game, with more than 75 auctions, was particularly trying, he said.

"To have to pursue 75 cases in one week off of eBay is ridiculous. Then we have to do it all over again," Dalton said, pointing to 2-inch thick manila folder containing printouts of the Tennessee auctions.

Dalton said he rescinds the season ticket privileges of any student caught scalping.

"It's been a really hard lesson for them to learn. They think they've made a lot of money and suddenly find they not only didn't make any money, but they've lost their season tickets," he said. "Before the Tennessee game there were a lot of people who already had the money in hand, went down to get their tickets and were shocked to find they couldn't pick up them up."

Dalton said Student Judicial Affairs devotes so many hours to catching student scalpers because the University Athletic Association loses a lot of money selling $6 student tickets. Discounted tickets are a privilege, not a right, he said, and students who scalp are abusing that privilege.

A graduate student, who asked to remain anonymous, said he was outraged that UF, which has the nation's third-richest college athletics program, went after student scalpers.

"The UAA couldn't care less whether scalping is illegal. Football is a profit center and the multimillionaires just want their precious money," he said.

He said he bought a season ticket so he could earn some money to help offset the high cost of graduate school. Although he has been able to sell the tickets on eBay, he said the Alabama game only netted him $25. Now that he knows UF officials are lurking on eBay, he said he might not sell any more tickets.

"It's unbelievable, with all the serious crime happening on campus, that these fruitcakes would waste time on scalpers," he said. "Heaven forbid if a legitimately poor college student tries to make some money."

A senior majoring in plant pathology, who requested that her name not be used, said she agrees.

"Who cares if somebody wants to give a student $300 for his FSU ticket? That doesn't even cover books for most of us," she said in an e-mail interview.

She said she was well acquainted with UF's rules against scalping but wasn't concerned, despite having a pair of Florida State tickets advertised on eBay. The ad specifies that the tickets come for the face value of $6 each with the purchase of a one-of-a-kind hand made alligator signed by the artist. Unlike a wallet or Bic pen, Student Judicial Affairs would be hard-pressed to put a value on a piece of art, she said. Besides, she added, UF probably doesn't care enough about scalping to have the art appraised.

"If they were truly that concerned about scalping, they would implement a system like other schools have where tickets are checked at the gates," she said.

John Dalton echoed the sentiment. He said UF could put an end to student ticket scalping by scanning student's IDs before they go into Ben Hill Griffin Stadium. That way, he explained, only students could use student tickets.

"I believe the university is really an enabler for a student's scalping habit because we won't take measures to stop it," Dalton said. "The disappointing part about this whole thing is that it is very easy to solve this problem."

He said he would be meeting with Jeremy Foley, UF athletics director, in early October to discuss ID scanners. Dalton said UF has been talking about installing scanners for at least five years and he hopes they do it soon. He said tracing e-mail addresses isn't the best use of his time.

David Cayton, assistant director for Student Judicial Affairs, said he too has wasted a lot of time tracing e-mail addresses, but was amazed to find a number of students posted their UF e-mail address on eBay.

"It's an incredibly naïve thing to do, to put your UF address on eBay and think somebody is not going to track you down," he said. "You can put the address into the electronic phone book search form on the UF site and find out who it is. It's public information. That's how I tracked them down."

Cayton said America Online users were almost as easy because he has an AOL account and can access e-mail account information of other users.

But overall, tracing online scalpers has been so difficult, Cayton said they have given up until they see how the UAA wants to deal with the problem.

"It's hard for us to do this on our own. For now we're going to concentrate more on the scalping that goes on outside the stadium," he said.

Keith Kameg, spokesman for the Gainesville Police Department, said they, too, are mainly interested in scalping outside the stadium. He said GPD isn't concerned with online scalping.

"It's so new we would have to take a look at it," he said. "It's not that we can't deal with it, but you have to prioritize. How much resource should you send that way?"

Kameg said GPD would need a complaint before they would do anything about ticket sales on eBay. He said people had complained about scalping on game day.

Whether people sell tickets at the stadium or online, for it to be a crime, a financial transaction has to take place, he said. An undercover officer would have to buy tickets before GPD could arrest someone for scalping on eBay. He said he doesn't believe hunting scalpers online would be the best use of police resources.

A UF history major, who identified himself only as Wally, said that is the reason he won't sell tickets at the stadium. He sold a pair of Tennessee tickets on eBay for $320 and a pair of Alabama tickets for $132.50.

"EBay is a much safer place to sell tickets than to walk out on the street holding up tickets, where there could be any number of plain clothes officers walking about," Wally said by e-mail.

Despite using his UF e-mail account, he said nobody from Student Judicial Affairs had contacted him. He said he would continue to sell tickets on eBay. He doesn't plan to use a different e-mail address.

"UF is losing touch," he said. "The amount of money the school makes from the athletic department is already overblown. UF is being ridiculous if they really have a problem with entrepreneurial students."

Wally said the possibility of losing his season ticket is much less worrisome than the possibility of going to jail. He doesn't think local police agencies would ever go after online scalpers.

Alachua County Sheriff's Sgt. James Troiano said his department had not looked at online scalping because they weren't aware of it. He said he wondered how many tickets were being scalped online. If students were scalping online, his department would usually refer it to UF police, he said.

He questioned whether the focus of Florida's anti-scalping law belonged on the seller.

"The prices being paid for these tickets is the issue," Troiano said. "If you want to spend $500 for a $25 ticket, who should be the criminal here? I don't understand people. They pay those kind of prices to go to a game when they could call law enforcement and we could put a stop to it."

Wally agrees with Troiano. He said it was absurd that a student could go to jail for selling a football ticket for $8.

Even more ridiculous, he said, was that UF goes after students for selling $6 tickets for $22 because they want to be able to sell that same ticket for $22.

David Cayton emphasized that Student Judicial Affairs didn't write the anti-scalping law. They just enforce it.

Although they aren't tracking sales now, he said he expects to begin monitoring eBay again after the meeting with UAA officials. The prospect does not thrill him.

"The Florida State game is going to be a nightmare," he said.