"I am a free-market guy, but I don't like the idea of profiting off another person's death," he said via e-mail.
"I found it in poor taste and very disrespectful to the Paterno family, who have been put through so much the last 21/2 months," Slanina said.
Rodney Erickson, president of Pennsylvania State University, called the attempts to sell the free memorial tickets "reprehensible."
The public memorial service is scheduled for Thursday afternoon. The tickets were offered online with a limit of two per order.
One would-be seller, who agreed to comment on condition of anonymity, said he figured people who failed to score tickets during the initial stampede would be happy to see them available again on eBay.
However, he was swamped with dubious high bids from people he believes were trying to sabotage his auction.
"Got a lot of hate mail and I just took it down because it was starting to get ridiculous and become a waste of time with all the fake bids," he said via e-mail.
The fake bidding could explain why the one auction almost hit six figures. That eBay seller did not respond to a request for comment.
An eBay spokeswoman said the auctions were shut down because they violated the company's policy.
"eBay's event ticket resale policy does not allow the sale of tickets to events in which all tickets are free to the public," Amanda Coffee wrote in an e-mail.
"In accordance with the policy, eBay will not allow the sale of tickets to Joe Paterno's memorial service," she said.
On the ticket-resale website StubHub, inquiries about buying tickets to the memorial led to a page with a pop-up notification saying that tickets were not being sold on the site and redirecting visitors to Penn State's official sports site.
But as long as there is money to be made, tickets likely will be sold one way or another.
"Never been so disgusted in my life," Allison Jendrasek, a senior at Penn State, complained on Twitter.
"Listening to students joke about how much $ they'd make selling their JoePa memorial tickets #whatashame," she wrote.
Contact staff writer Robert Moran at 215-854-5983 or bmoran@phillynews.com, or follow @RobertMoran215 on Twitter.
Inquirer staff writer Susan Snyder contributed to this article.
