In reality you don't hire people for that, way too risky.
You simply have a few "good friends" run a bidbot-script on some leftover machines. That's near impossible to detect (just create new accounts and cycle credit cards regularly) and makes the scheme entirely bulletproof.
Maybe there are people working for them by placing bids until they win every item.
It would explain this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=700250
Even with the new option to buy the products at full price, it would still be a scam since they've acquired customers by cheating them into thinking they would have the possibility to buy at a discounted price.
Anyway, there's an issue with the transparency of their operations which is not required in an auction site like ebay since on ebay the winner of the auction must be real, in order to buy the item from the seller.