Virtual MMO Currency Trading Crippled By Fraud

Thanks to Terra Nova for pointing to the Gaming Open Market website, home of "the next generation of [MMO] game commodity trading", where there's an announcement that: "Until further notice, Gaming Open Market will be closing its doors to all game currency trading except Second Life." There's more information in a post at the official Second Life forums, where Jamie Hale explains: "Yesterday, I had a user breeze through spending over $3000 USD on [EVE Online] and [Star Wars Galaxies]. Immediately after taking delivery of the ISK and credits, he reversed all the payments, claiming he never received the goods. This is a well-known loophole in PayPal's seller protection policy. Basically, I have no recourse at all. PayPal accepts no form of proof of delivery except physical waybills (UPS, FedEx, etc)."

Comments

Re:The thief e-mailed and confessed?

[whoda]

In about the 4th sentence of the article.

"The thief emailed us and explained that the goods he stole will be kept as "payment" for the lesson he taught us."

see it now? ;)

More updates

[whoda]

"This incident has been reported to the FBI Internet Fraud Department, and tomorrow to the RCMP. We have compiled as much information as possible on this person, including his name, address, phone number, email addresses and the IPs used to log into our site. All of this information will be turned over to the authorities."

And that should just about make sure the guy is found. Paypal does do some 'decent' checks to verify your identity when setting up accounts.