Swoopo.com is the most efficient, addictive way to separate people from their money.

The thing about Swoopo is that the devil here lies deep, deep in the details. Unless you're willing to do a bunch of math, it's easy not to notice that Swoopo is taking in a lot more for most of its high-ticket items than the price you'd pay in a store. Even after you've done the math, Swoopo can still seem oddly compelling. One more irrational impulse Swoopo caters to is an urge to believe that there must be some strategy that beats the system. As Swoopo's own business development director, Chris Bauman, told one blogger: "Winning takes two things: money and patience. Every person has a strategy."

Indeed, he undoubtedly does. The problem is that, as with the gambling systems peddled by countless books, none of those strategies will actually work. Just remember that no matter how many times you bid, your chance of winning does not increase. And the bigger Swoopo gets, the worse it will be. The more people sign on to bid, the lower your chances become—and the more Swoopo collects in bidding charges. The only winning strategy is not to play in the first place.

Still not convinced? Try going to Swoopo and watching the end of one of their auctions. As I wrapped up this story, I kept my eye on one another MacBook—a recently discontinued model that Swoopo says is worth $1,299 (though it's available for $1,099 from other sites). I thought that maybe I'd given Swoopo too hard a time and the MacBook Pro I'd started with was as bad as it got.

It's not. I kept setting down how much Swoopo had gotten in fees for this auction, but each time I'd finished calculating a number—$2,500, $2,600, $2,700—I'd turn back to my browser to find that the auction was still going, and Swoopo was still raking in fees for 60 cents a pop. Finally, I gave up when it became clear that Swoopo could make money faster than I could count it. As I wrote this sentence, Swoopo's bidding fees on this one auction had gotten over the $3,000 mark. And they were still rising fast.