No, I don't think they can. They can "game" maybe 15 reviews, but I have yet to be scammed by (or even hear of someone being scammed by) someone with thousands of reviews when they're almost all positive. It's kind of absurd to suggest the system is similar to that of craigslist where you generally have no data points whatsoever.
Something I heard about recently was businesses offering to buy accounts from legit users, priced based on how old the account is and % rating. Obviously that's something that could be abused by a scammer (buy trustworthy account and sell as many empty laptop boxes as you can before you get closed down).
I think it was ads popping up on FB asking to buy eBay accounts that made me aware of it but can't find anything right now on a quick Google search.
A couple of days ago I saw some tablets being sold for about 1/10th of their normal price by a seller with an old account and good feedback. But looking into it more I found that their only current sales listings were duplicates of the same tablet offer, and looking at past feedback it was mainly buys rather than sells and usually for household items and stuff that seemed personal rather than business related. Not exactly conclusive but it smelt funny enough that I didn't risk a purchase (I realise lots of people will just say that the low price makes it obvious, too good to be true means it isn't true etc... my own life experience has shown otherwise and I've probably had some bargains that those people would have missed out on).
I just tried to find the listing again and it seems to have disappeared - I feel it might have been a scam.
I enjoy using eBay as a buyer, been using it for 10 years and hundreds of purchases, only sold a few times but it's always been ok for me. There have been a few hiccoughs but I've always found some kind of resolution in the end. If the purchase is even slightly significant I check the seller's feedback out carefully. Really I think that's all that needs to be done but some people either don't know this, can't be bothered to, or don't want to spend their time in that way.
I seem to remember that the old-school method was to auction off a bunch of small-ticket items like shareware/freeware CDs, bumper stickers, etc. to build up positive reviews.
