freelunch

Money laundering is definitely a possibility since you can buy amazon gift cards directly from PayPal. I also think some items (not necessarily these gift cards) are being used as placeholder items for a product or service (drugs, etc). For instance I saw a very commonly available $2 bottle of salad dressing go for $20 the other day. I was intrigued and saw that a lot of items from the seller had sold for mulitples of their market value.

So why does Tokyo’s system work so much better? They’re humans too, but apparently their transit system works much better.

None of your linked articles fit your original description, so I’d say his database is comprehensive.