Organized Crazy Addicts

roba · Posted: Sun Aug 20, 2006 1:13 pm Post subject: Biggest MMO scam ever?

I think one guy playing CCP's Eve Online MMO just successfuly finished biggest scam in MMO history.

He managed to steal about 790 Billion ISK (credits) from other players by launching and running fake Investment Bank corporation. 790B is extremly high number, considering most of playerbase never reach 1B in wallet. Only VERY FEW richest industrialists in Eve reach 100B mark. 790B is so much money, that if used in destructive way, Eve's economy could be seriously hurt.

However, ingame money doesnt make this scam interesting, as its virtual property. But ISK/USD ratio does. If we take current eBay's rate on illegal ISK sales, 790B ISK is worth of $118,500 !!! Shocked

Thats why I think its biggest MMO scam ever.

In Eve, corporations are like clans or guilds. Thanks to Eve's developed ingame economics (probably best in MMO industry, completly player driven), players often start their corporations via public IPO's. They issue shares and sell them to other players to get initial capital for their business. Starting production in Eve needs a lot of investment, so you can either do it hard way and spend months by earning money by yourself, or you can do IPO and get money from investors. Then you pay them dividents.

Our scammer was running bank type corporation. He paid interests for ISK placed in his bank and he issued loans to other corporations. He also had Investment subcorp, which was investing into other IPOs and long term business.

At least that was plan. In reality, he never invested anything. For months, he was getting more and more money from player base and paid dividents/interests from new deposits. He was able to run this over half year, since he got support of some respected members of Eve community, players did not have any doubts about his creditibility.

Yesterday he posted video where he announced it was a scam and laughed on everyone. He is now richest person in Eve Universe. CCP (game author) stated many times in the past, that scamming ingame is valid tactic and is not bannable offense. They will do nothing, as he did not violate EULA or any game rule. Many ppl complain about this policy, but many other thinks this is what makes Eve unique - brutality of player driven economy, pure PvP with minimum NPC infulence.

Anyway, here is the video, probably not very interesting for non Eve players, but at least you can see biggest scammer in MMO history. Smile