The weekly newsletter for Fed2 by ibgames

EARTHDATE: July 5, 2009

Official News page 8


REAL LIFE NEWS: VIRTUAL GAME MONEY USED TO SETTLE REAL LIFE DEBTS

by Hazed

Here's another story about a fraudster, this time one who operated in a virtual world but managed to convert the gain into real life wealth. The fraud took place in Eve Online, where the CEO of a player-run bank stole thousands of dollars of the game's currency and then traded it for real dollars.

A 27-year old Australian tech worker who has been identified only as Richard (although online his handle was RicDic or Ricdics) was the head of the player-run savings and loan institution Ebank where players could bank their online wealth, in the game's currency of Interstellar Kredits. He embezzled about 200 billion of these IKs from fellow players, and then exchanged the virtual money for about $5,000 in real life on the black market.

When the scandal broke within the online world, customers made a run on the bank, worried that they would lose the money they had deposited. The game was mirroring the real world financial crisis!

Apparently, Richard had made off with about 8.6% of the bank's assets. The other owners of the bank claim that they are still very well capitalized and the run has ended. Meanwhile, what Richard did was not illegal in real life - and not even in the game, either, because virtual crime is really just a part of the game. However, he has been kicked off the service because exchanging the stolen credits for real money breaks the terms of service.


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