Student Makes a Million Online, Gets Deported

Via Kotaku, a story at the Mainichi daily news about an enterprising exchange student that got himself deported. Wang Yue Si, a Chinese student who went to Japan on a student visa, found himself in need of some spending money. Since he was a gamer, he decided to make some cash by selling virtual items online. He was so successful, the cops noticed. From the article: "He started selling items such as weapons and currency for online games through an Internet auction site in April this year, without obtaining the appropriate residency status. Wang, living in Kumamoto, has admitted that he sold the virtual goods for about 6 million yen ($US 1.3 Million), in violation of the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Law. A bank worker became suspicious when Wang regularly sent money back home to China and alerted police in August, prompting Kumamoto police officers to investigate the student."

Comments

Well well

[imsabbel]

Seeing how cutthroat the whole gold and itemfarming buisness is, to be able earn $1m+ from sales, he must have been the frontman of aa rather large gang of sweatshop farmers. Which would be perfectly fine as a violation of his status.

People with misplaced priorties

[erroneus]

They never cease to amaze me. I don't blame the opportunist quite as much as I blame the addicts.

Gambling, porn, online gaming... let's add drugs to the list too. It's all a waste of money. Porn is free as far as I'm concerned, gambling is often too risky the way some addicts play, and drugs waste in an obvious way. But paying for "virtual stuff" in a virtual world?! That's a waste of money and time.

It's not like I don't understand it -- I recall calling in sick to work more than once so I could finish a level of X-Wing versus Tie Fighter... the pay check started to reflect my obsession and I made corrections. I wish other people could learn that lesson.

Re:Inmates watching inmates

[lindseyp]

I work for a bank. You'd be surprised at the level of monitoring these days. Particularly because employees are under instruction not to inform you of any suspicion they may have, for fear of alerting a potential criminal that his game is up.

Behold

You may not consider wikipedia 'credible', but a google search for "suspicious activity reporting" or "Anti money laundering guidelines brings up a wealth of credible documentation. I just linked to wikipedia because the information was presented in an easy to digest format.