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.

Comments

Re:$15-$18 million of real money or FIFA money?

[jandrese]

My guess is that it was the part where they sold the coins to other people knowing full well that EA could revoke the coins or terminate the accounts of anyone who bought them.

But yeah, the actual crime of writing a bot to farm coins seems more like a TOS violation than a felony. Punishment should probably be limited to getting kicked out of the game and never being allowed back online. Maybe even kicked out of EA online servers entirely.