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Hacker Charged With Fraud After 'Stealing' In-game FIFA Currency (cnet.com)
The FBI said it believes a group of hackers made millions off a scam to defraud publisher Electronic Arts. From a report on CNET: A US man is facing felony wire fraud charges for the theft of digital currency from game developer Electronic Arts. According to an FBI indictment, Anthony Clark and his co-defendants are being charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud for "stealing" in-game currency in multiplayer football game FIFA Ultimate Team for Xbox One, PS4 and PC. The indictment details that Clark and three others, named as Ricky Miller, Nicholas Castellucci and Eaton Zveare, members of hacking group RANE Developments, designed an app using the game's source code and developer kit. This app fraudulently told EA's servers that thousands of matches had been completed in the game. These completion reports were rewarded with FIFA coins, which the group sold to what the FBI called "black market" coin dealers. Between them, the group earned $15-$18 million.
They were able to do this because they were SMART!
--The Don
Maybe they should have stopped after only a couple of million?
If real, that is more lucrative than most apps that are developed!
I'm sorry, I think you're confusing football - you know, the game where move a ball around with your feet - with an American curiosity, "Handegg".
While we're on the subject, "Handball" is not a game played by yuppies involving hitting a ball against a wall; it's a fast-paced aggressive team sport, something like a cross between basketball and football (not handegg).
It's times like this I wish I had a friend named 'The Professor'.
They abuse their employees, Origin has been proven multiple times to be malware that scans instant messaging logs of its users, and ever since their inception so many long years ago they have pursued anti-consumer ethics and policies. They have destroyed entire companies and livelihoods.
But that doesn't matter because when it comes down to it I guess. Anyway they've done this shit before with Dead Space 3 and they'll keep doing it. The F2P bullshit is South Korea's fault, a poisoning of the well.
lots of people lost their in game currency and items from exploits/hackers yet most of the time the company did nothing and if you as a plebeian tried to get the authorities to investigate you'd be told to beat it but BUT oh a corporation loses some in game currency and the FBI is on it.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
IRS to go after any one that wins in game cash now?
You won in game cash and you need to pay us for it.
It's not football, it's futbol!
This particular game is not a football game, it's a soccer game.
Outside of America the term "Football" means a game played with a round ball and your feet that Americans prefer to call soccer. Why Americans call their rugby like game played with a rugby ball that rarely involves playing with the feet "football" is a mystery, but they do, much to the confusion of Americans who overhear foreigners discussing "Football" and don't recognize the team names.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
What are the odds of them reporting this income?
But no, this wasn't in game cash. This was taken out of game, making it converted.
It'll be seized, and if the FBI does its job, the transactions refunded to the victims.
Ok, ok, so they'll keep the proceeds fof themselves, unless the customers complain.
Oh well.
I like they way that you put "stealing" in quotes. It's not really stealing because EA did not lose any money. The hackers found a way to make the FIFA game CREATE money for them, and then they sold that in-game money for real money. The only people who are out "Real" money are the clients who bought the in-game currency, but they have something to show for it.
If anything, the people who bought the in-game currency from the hackers should sue EA for making a crappy program that someone could abuse.
I could turn n a few people for on-line in-game murder.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Back in the 1990s on a MUD, I would sometimes pick other player's pockets to get coins. On a few occasions I even virtually killed someone, and though I don't remember very well, I probably took the in-game currency from their corpses, too. In 2016 this would get me real-life fraud charges?!
If there is no currency exchange and it cannot be used to buy goods, it's property. The wire fraud charge is just bonkers. The reason the FBI would jumped to such a conclusion is that what was being done wasn't actually illegal. They were authorized to use the servers and nothing of value was taken because it was created by the hackers.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
IRS to go after any one that wins in game cash now?
You won in game cash and you need to pay us for it.
Aren't things like "XP" (experience points) earned in-game and used to purchase items/abilities/etc the same thing?
If criminal currency laws apply to in-game currencies, will people who play computer games that use XP or similar in-game transactional "currencies" need to fill out an IRS Form 1099 after every game session? What about the value of "property" bought within the game, is it taxable? Should State sales tax be levied against in-game currencies?
I'd hate to receive a tax bill for the ~15 million C-Bills I've got sitting in my Mech Warrior Online game account.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
In Australia it can mean Rugby League, Rugby Union or Aussie No-rules depending on where you are.
If that is true why on earth is the governing body for rugby in England named the Rugby Football Union?
It's almost like "football" is a term that covers a wide variety of sports and different locales use just plain old "football" to refer to whichever happens to be more popular there.
There is actually people who actually play EA games these days?
They haven't made a relevant sports game since Mutant League Football.
This is an interesting situation, from my limited knowledge of it. It's the first time I'm aware of that something with no monetary value was taken from the issuer with no actual deprivation of services (i.e. it's not a limited resource; nobody was deprived of these coins), yet the criminals were able to literally receive millions of dollars selling them. It's as if someone was selling pirated Mp3s, except in this case, the coins aren't purchased in the first place; they're won through playing a game (which doesn't have a cost per match, meaning they're actually free after you purchase the game & xbox live membership or whatever platform this is.)
So, basically, we have a victimless* crime that made real money. Seems quite unusual.
*The victims here are the other players who didn't cheat, and now have an unfair disadvantage.
Something that I have always had a beef with is software companies. Does Ford, Toyota, or any other hard goods manufactures state or enforce what I would call "left turn Sundays?" Where, as a part of a Ford EULA for example, states it is the company's right and requirement that you as an owner (not really) are required to make left turns only on Sunday. If you fail to do this, then we have a right to take you to court and prosecute. Let's not even talk about arbitration. If EA left a wide open window in its API or SDK, it's their fault. Period. Anyone want to talk about IoT and DDoS in this regard? Same thing...
Can I sue the owner of a pinball game for make the outlines to wide? or the having the tilt set to high?
in some games hacking is part of the game and other ways for some setting as long as it's just in game it should be ok. But for people to be facing real court / jail / prison for it?
Why Americans call their rugby like game played with a rugby ball that rarely involves playing with the feet "football" is a mystery, but they do, much to the confusion of Americans who overhear foreigners discussing "Football" and don't recognize the team names.
Because it initially developed from a game that was similar to soccer in that you could not carry the ball but had to either kick or bat the ball to progress down the field. It was only a few decades later that the sport started to include more rugby-like rules, and even more decades before the gained the start/stop style of play and the forward pass was included.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
FYI it isn't just Americans, ask an Australian about football and he will probably ask you if you mean Aussie Rules or Rugby.
The Soccoroos is the name of the Austrailan National futbol/soccer team.
It's called football to distinguish it from horseball.
IRS to go after any one that wins in game cash now?
Hardly. But if you sell your in-game cash for $15 million in real money, the IRS will want their cut of the profit.
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
Goldman Sachs do this all the time. Too big to fail, too big to jail.
--
AmiMoJo
Lets see if the hackers get harsher punishments than Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini.
So "wire fraud" means tricking EA into generating a few fake game coins? Since when is this a real crime, and why is the FBI getting involved - have they solved all the real-world crimes already?
This is legally wrong. According to the IRS, if you, for example, receive something as a gift, you're supposed to declare that as "income", and pay taxes on it based on its fair market value, even if you don't actually sell it.
I don't see how it's any different here.
So yes, people who win a bunch of in-game cash need to report this to the IRS and pay taxes on it.
Otherwise, these people should be cleared of the "fraud" charges.
You can't have it both ways.
to wide what??
Why Americans call their rugby like game played with a rugby ball that rarely involves playing with the feet "football" is a mystery, but they do, much to the confusion of Americans who overhear foreigners discussing "Football" and don't recognize the team names.
No it is not a mystery and those names were used in Europe too at one point.
How can it be "wire" fraud.
Wireless.
Means no wires.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The NFL sanctions games in a sport called "Gridiron Football," which is also commonly shortened to football. The name comes from the fact that the oblong ball was historically 12 inches (one foot) long, when measured tip to tip. (The size of the ball was changed to the modern 11.5 inches in the 1930s to make the forward pass easier.)
so what about in game stuff like a fake field goal, fake punt, etc = fraud?
This makes the game even more realistic.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
FTC statement
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
This is legally wrong. According to the IRS, if you, for example, receive something as a gift, you're supposed to declare that as "income", and pay taxes on it based on its fair market value, even if you don't actually sell it.
You do not have to declare a gift as income unless it's over the reporting amount of $16,000 (for 2016).
sorry, $14,000. https://turbotax.intuit.com/ta...
If you want: But how do you prove the maker owed you a lower tilt? Or, that you didn't know the tilt being 'offered' was too high, when you purchased access to the machine? Or, that you suffered distress and material damage from the level of tilt supplied?
Not guilty.
Why Americans call their rugby like game played with a rugby ball that rarely involves playing with the feet "football" is a mystery...
I don't know. Maybe it's something to do with the game being played on foot as opposed to on horseback?
Some guys are being locked up because they played a fake sports game and made fake money in the fake game world and sold the fake stuff for real stuff? Fuck my world. The zombie apocalypse is real. Trump is president. The world is over.
$15 milion is a lot more than $14,000. We're talking about someone who "cheated" an online game for in-game funny money and sold it for $15M here, so that certainly qualifies for the gift threshold. It would be the same for anyone else who didn't cheat in the game and made a bunch of in-game funny money, and didn't sell it. So my point is: does the IRS actually go after people who are really serious gamers and amass lots of in-game "money" (without selling it for real money) and demand tax payments? If not, then this is not real money, and these hackers didn't really commit "fraud".
Not only that, but (you might be able to answer this better than me) doesn't the IRS require you to pay taxes on any "income" you earn? The gift exclusion is for gifts only, not for payment maid in lieu of US Dollars. If you do some yard work or handyman work for someone (not a relative/friend), and he pays you in produce from his garden or eggs from his chicken coop, you're supposed to assess the fair market value of those goods, and declare them as income and pay taxes on them, both state and federal. Of course, no one does, but that's the law. There's no minimum value exclusion here I know of. It's no different with in-game "money". So logically, the IRS should be demanding that all these MMORPG companies provide detailed information to them about all their players and how much in-game money they have, so the IRS can demand payment.
The name of the game used to be 'Association Football'. It isn't anymore, it's just 'football'. The alleged origin of the term 'soccer' is that both football and rugby were played at some public schools. The rugby players referred to their game as 'rugger', the football players abbreviated the name of their game to 'soc' (short for association). A sporty type who played both games was asked at the beginning of the season if he was going to play rugger this season, and he replied that no, he was going to play 'soc-er', the rest of the lads picked up the term and it spread from there. Or so the story goes. In any case, soccer as a term for football is very old.
You obtained a thing through deception, and everyone in the transaction agrees that the thing has value. How isn't that fraud?
It's not a matter of "fraud". It's a matter of "Wire Fraud" under U.S. law.
Wire fraud is narrower than, say, mail fraud (which can apply to services). To be "Wire Fraud" there has to be a transfer of "money" or "property", not just "something of value".
If the thing transferred is something of which there is a fixed and limited amount, it might arguably qualify. But if it's just a count that the service can bump up and down arbitrarily, or an instance of a token of a class where the service can create or destroy as many as they like, it isn't "money"-like or "property"-like, no matter how much someone is willing to pay for it. It might be "service"-like. But that isn't an element of wire fraud.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Let's suppose they only farmed the coins and didn't sell them.
Would it still be fraud? No real money involved. Or a simple violation of TOS?
Let's suppose this is not a computer game, its monopoly, with real game components.
Would it be fraud if they stole monopoly money while other players are not watching?
Let's suppose you are playing monopoly and you pay real money to your brother to steal monopoly money from the in-game bank.
Would it be possible to be accused of fraud in that case?
Let's suppose it the other way around, they didn't farm the coins but earned them right and then sold them to earn millons in cash but didn't mention it to the IRS.
Would it still be fraud? Or tax evasion?
Let's suppose they break the game rules / tos and farm them, and then exchange the game coins for bitcoins.
Would it still be fraud? Like stealing monopoly money for bitcoins would be?
So what is "fraud"... how they obtained them? (making stealing money in monopoly also "real" fraud) ... or is the fact that obtaining them under violation of game rules (like stealing monopoly money is) and then selling them what makes it fraud?
So, is it fraud? tax evasion? tos violation?
Oh, good point. That does seem a little weird, then.
wire fraud is identical to mail fraud statute except that it speaks of communications transmitted by wire
If the thing transferred is something of which there is a fixed and limited amount, it might arguably qualify.
Even if your definition of wire fraud only involving money and property were true, this statement wouldn't follow since money doesn't have a fixed and limited amount.
Conclusion: You have no fucking idea what you're talking about.
https://www.justice.gov/usam/c...