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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.
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'.
No, they were able to do this because EA was dumb. Never trust state information that the client is giving you in a networked game or at the very least sanity check it occasionally if its not feasible to do everything server-side. Anyone who played MMOs or shooters back in the 90's probably has fond memories of all the crazy hacks people could use because the server would just accept whatever data the client sent.
besides, "in-game" currency is an unlawful fraud to begin with.
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.
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
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.
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.
Yeah, this.
It never seems to rise to fraud when unplayable buggy games are shipped, or are missing advertised features. Nobody in power bats an eye when multiplayer games have their servers shut off and thus ruin the value of something I paid for, or when the first sale doctrine is violated and I can't sell my property due to DRM.
So yeah, these guys behaved badly, but it sort of like finding out a mobster's house got robbed. I have no sympathy to spare, and kind of hope the thieves get off.
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.
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
If these points were 'earned' from playing games, then it sounds like they're not much different from winning tickets at a Skee-Ball machine. If the publisher decides to gate content behind them, I don't see how that's even the slightest bit unethical. They create content and then limit access to it.
This seems a lot like printing your own skee-ball reward tickets, using them to "buy" passes to the exclusive backroom pinball arcade, then selling them on Ebay. You obtained a thing through deception, and everyone in the transaction agrees that the thing has value. How isn't that fraud?
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.
If you commit a crime against criminals you're still a criminal. But that's beside the point. It's a tech story. The way they pulled of the fraud is of interest to certain people for various reasons.
Lets see if the hackers get harsher punishments than Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini.
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??
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...
No. Picking pockets and killing people was an agreed and accepted part of the game. In this case, those coins had no real world value either.
Except skeeball tickets are physical items that require real money to purchase. This video game shit is just points, no different than a score in Pac-Man.
Obviously they weren't just point sinces they were able to sell them and make $15 million. I'd sure like some of those "points."
BTW, your reference to Pac-Man makes it clear to everyone that you are up on the bleeding edge of today's technology.
$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.
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
Oh, good point. That does seem a little weird, then.
Your second paragraph is tilting at windmills.
When speaking about online currencies, gold farming and gaming APIs, if the best analogy you can come up with is a pac-man score, yeah, you don't get it.
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...