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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."
Summary says "6 million yen or $1.3m" .. but 6m yen is only about 50k dollars (1 yen is slightly less then 1 cent in value) .. so .. which is it?
I'm fairly certain they have immigration lawyers in Japan. Something tells me he was more than aware he couldn't make money while there. Not exactly like Japan is a dictatorship with harsh penalties for bizarre crimes, either. Poor baby.
Okay, deportation is a new angle, but there always seem to be problems when people sell in-game items. The stories keep coming...
I'd love to see a broad treatment of law-meets-games-meets-money from someone who actually understands the issues involved. I'm tangentially interested in all those things but I don't really have enough background to put these sorts of things into perspective.
Anyone?
do not fuck with gamers in Japan. They make the Koreans look like pussycats.
Four friends are playing a game of Monopoly. One guest turns to the other guest and offers to sell Park Place for $10 real dollars. You're the host, what would you do? That's right, tell the cheating bastard to go home.
How we know is more important than what we know.
The news article does not mention anything about the student being deported.
Clever and witty sig.
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.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Nothing to see here folks. He violated the terms of his visa, and thus got deported. The only thing unusual was his buisness.
Move along. Move along.
If you are on a student visa, you're not supposed to be making money by working, you're supposed to be studying. no I know there are ways around this, but with most of them, if you get caught, you go home.
[what?]
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.
The article says: "A university student from China has been arrested for illegally engaging in business activities outside the restrictions of his student visa, police said." Arrested, not deported.
Of course it's an English summary of a Japanese original. Does anyone here read Japanese well enough to check the original source?
About the discrepancy in the money amounts mentioned in another reply: 6 million yen is what the student has admitted. That's nowhere near $1 million. Police suspect his total profit is 100 million yen, which is near enough $1 million.
You're the host, what would you do?
House Rules: The house takes a 50% cut of all real money transactions that affect game play.
If Chon Wang wants to sell Park Place to Princess Pei Pei for $10, someone's going to have to fork $5 over to me.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
I'm in the wrong business.
Personally, I find it repugnant that banks report "suspicious" activities on their customers in many countries. For example, in the past, if you played with more than $10K at a time, US bank drones filed a report on you. Some years ago, that threshold changed to $3K -- loan to family member, car downpayment, any reasonable major purchase (PS3 plus games?!) - now requires reporting YOU to federal authorities as being suspicious. Interestingly, many banks file a report for any amount $1K in cash.
Dealing with a little cash is not exclusive only to the terrorists who sell drugs to babies. Nor is having a few thousand dollars in bank transfers solely the realm of pedophile rapists who conduct school shootings.
This guy got busted by a pro-active bank teller who was trained to believe everything you do is suspicious. All the while, in the US, they look you in the eye and smile like nothing is wrong, because they are generally held to strict secrecy by law. US bank tellers watch your every move and transaction, report your private monetary activities to federal law enforcement without you knowing it, then trot out the dog-n-pony show about some gold-farmer-type guy and we are supposed to believe that justifies our lack of privacy.
Many/most countries with restrictive visas (eg. student/tourist visas) would charge/deport someone for working without suitable work permits. I know people who have been blacklisted from USA (never allowed to even land in transit in USA) for overstaying a visa by one day.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Apparently they are claiming he illegally made money in Japan. Since the game was online, he could have made the same money in his home country.
.. is that illegal? Of course not. What if you business calls you for some advice while on vacation? Are you allowed to give it? Obviously you are or should be (if not, it's a retarded law).
Think of it this way, if you own a business in one country and that business continues to make money while you are on a tourist or student training visa (a visa that does not authorize you to engage in employment in the country you are visiting) in another
I don't see how he's in violation of his visa terms, considering that he could have been in China and done the same thing since it was all done online and not as part of work for some company. That is, it's not like he "stole" a local's job.
Unless selling virtual items for money is illegal, Japan is dumb and wrong for deporting him.
Is it? I suspect that Japan isn't the only country where money laundering is something the police takes an interest in. If someone on a student visa (who normally wouldn't have an income) transfers over $1 million, it's reasonable to be suspicious. In all likelyhood he committed tax fraud, btw.
Now, reasonable does not mean it's *worth* your or my money. Certainly not mine. But for someone already throwing out dozens of dollars each month, who has the money to spend, and is willing to throw out an extra few to do something that they think is fun without the effort of programming/finding/whatevering it themselves.....I'm not sure that's so much weirder than paying $14 for a two-hour movie and a little bag of buttered grain, that I could obtain for myself with a walk to the library and a small garden.
He made $1.3M selling NON-stuff.
How good of a salesman does it take to convince people to fork a million dollars over a period of a couple months, in exchange for a couple bits on a computer? Do you even have an idea of what that kind of talent is worth?
You're jealous.
You're bitter.
You wish you thought of it first.
You wish you had the balls and the skills required to pull it off.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
...How the HELL is he making all that money, and where can I get in on this?
Anyone can "stand up for what they believe", but it takes a very brave individual to change what they believe. - Loundry
you have a working visa, you are allowed to work, for the part your visa is allowed. You have a student visa, you study, you don't make $1million. If they catch you, you are out. Plus he might get a 1 or 10 year ban on returning to Japan.
Seriously, if you care about living in Japan, don't fuck with the officials, they are more Xenophobic than any other country I could imagine.
[thought I love living in Japan, its always about the people you meet]
"Freiheit ist immer auch die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden" - Rosa Luxemburg, 1871 - 1919
Most of these laws are designed to prevent students / non-immigrants from stealing jobs from the locals and driving down wages. This guy wasn't messing with the local job market - he could have made the same money in any city in China. Would it have been any diferent if he had made money in the stock market?
"Virtual Enterprise" trick will work only if you receive money in the country where it's registered. So if you have a nice little company in Germany that sells virtual stuff in US, you have to bill your customers from Germany, and receive your funds there.
And if you are in US on tourist visa, you can't keep selling your virtual "German made" stuff on a regular basis, as then you are working in US, and either need to have a local branch or work visa.
Japan did a normal thing in this case -- you don't have work permit, yet regularly cash in cheques? Goodbye!
Otherwise anyone could work as a salesman without any visa, claiming that goods were "made in another country".
Hyperom.com
He didn't get it taken away.
You can live real well with that kind of money in China, so I don't think he has many regrets.
It wouldn't be taxable if they were paying him in imaginary money, but they're not. He's making a real profit no matter where the work is done.
"6 million yen ($US 1.3 Million)"
:)
In Tokyo, I spend about 1000-1500 yen on lunch every day. Given this new exchange rate, that means my lunch today will cost between $216.66 and $324.99 USD! Of course, now I'll be rich when I go back home to the states
The issue wasn't that he wasn't paying taxes. The issue was that he was transferring large amounts of money out of the country. As a tool against money laundering, nearly all banks across the world are required to report any such transfers to the authorities (do a google search for "suspicious transactions").
Since he was a student, there is the natural expectation that he would be bringing money into the country, rather than actively sending it out. If had just deposited the money into a Chinese bank account, the Japanese authorities probably wouldn't have been any the wiser.
This does open up an interesting concept of work. If you create something (online game artifact, video, animation, shareware application) which you do in your spare time while abroad, then market it online, does that constitute work?
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Which libertarian road? The one built on the internet, which in turn is built on a series of backbones put together by massive taxpayer-funded, semi-military projects like Arpanet? Or maybe the one using Satellites for communication, the entire infrastructure for launching and maintaining which was paid for by governments... Or maybe the copper wire network 90% of people in the world still use to run their ADSL over, which was built in most of the world (even in most of the USA if you check your telecoms history) by GOVERNMENTS, raising, you know, TAXES. "Most activities do not need regulation" Correct. This does not mean governments should abrogate the right to tax transactions. Nor does it mean its very hard to retain this right, even in the modern world. Americans who envision a world with no-one out there raising taxes on those generating the wealth should remember that only the most naive proto-marxists ever believed in a "withering away of the state".
ceci n'est pas un sig
So, it's now unethical to give people what they want and take money in return?
You make it sound like he's the trifecta evil incarnate: By day he smacks starving African children around, rampages through Tokyo bi-daily, and then pisses in public swimming pools. By night, when he has time for a break, he curls up next to a cozy immolated Christian and snacks on candied babies, and then...he...sells virtual items online?!?!?!!!! *gasp* Why, you'd expect that someone so evil wouldn't sleep so well, except perhaps, by the comforting warm glow of a burning Pope.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
Shhh. How dare you threaten the myth of the Rugged Individual? These are self-made men! All of your girly infrastructure, legal protections, immunizations, public education, stabilized currency and whatnot just impeded their awesome achievements.
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain
According to xe.com, 6M yen is about $51600. Still a nice sum for a student, but not even near $1M.
According to TFA, the student is _suspected_ to have earned 150M yen, which translates to $1.29M. This is what the police suspect, and has not been admitted by the student in question nor has this claim been supported by any other evidence.
Editors, even though this is Slashdot please try to do your work. This isn't Digg.
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