Crime & Punishment

Saw someone recently doing this quite effectively in Dodixie. He claimed he'd lost a Navy Megathron in an L3 mission and needed ISK to buy a Vexor. I recognised them as a margin scammer as I'd seen the name before.

If I were him, I'd have asked for ISK to buy a Brutix instead. Still plausible to get it, and each payout is three times as large.

At least three people gave him small amounts in the time I was watching.

Ok, I admit it. I have played the victim and received hundreds of millions of ships, mods,ISK and even a plex, all because I played the role of a dumb female blonde noob with large assets.

Popping into a random system, hitting local with whatever line I feel that day and the whiteknights and hard up pixel loving nerds just give me ISK. It's pretty comical actually.

Humans...we are an interesting species.

I'm afraid that there is a sad truth here. The threat is not that this scam will become pervasive and sour the sympathy of the New Eden public against helping newbies in need. The threat is that they will realize that most "newbies in need of help", that you do not know personally, are probably just scammers running a scam. They probably have been for a very long time, especially on Eve, but pretty much in every other context as well. It's a painful truth to face for White Knights and e-honor RPers. But it's still the truth. Spreading the truth of the scam reduces victim losses.

The newbies worthy of help wouldn't be in local whinging in the first place. People of integrity don't ask for charity and they don't manipulate a public audience into offering it. If they are just having a bad day and venting, then they would decline any and all offers of charity. The whole point of the game is to gather the resources necessary to fund your player experience. IMO.

To be honest, this isn't really anything new. No conspiracy really, it only makes sense that when you put enough people together in one place, somebody is going to figure out this type of behaviour. Once one person does it, it's only a matter of time until others notice and repeat, with alts of their own.

I first spotted this 'scam' in early 2008, there was a new guy in corp, and when chatting on comms about him, a few players realised they had each donated a ratting ship to this guy. He was confronted, and spewed some horrible alliance mail about how he took us for billions, then we proceeded to kill two of the battlecruisers he had been gifted. Seems he didn't have that much knowledge of game mechanics involving player-owned outposts, and had to learn twice that he couldn't re-dock.

In theory it would be a hard scam to keep running, or to make very much at one time.

The advantage is that: If you don't get greedy, and 'fly under the radar' you could repeatedly perpetrate that scam without getting caught (the safari method).

Epilogue

The scammer tried to safari his way around a few more corps after that, and convos with his CEOs revealed he kept trying the same thing, with mixed success.

I think the key to succeeding at this scam is to truly have no shame.

You must be kidding.. I just bought this PLEX and I am 8.2mil short of the transaction fee... Can someone spot me the 8.2mil for the sales tax? I can't even sell this ****...

Break out your mining lasers...