Crime & Punishment

I'm a new player (of about a month) and while I realize it will likely make no difference, perhaps someone will see this and it will save them from a bad experience:

The corporation Freedom Unchained ran the classic and thorough recruitment scam on my brother and me tonight - courier contract scam, then blew up the ships we were in (after we paid a ransom for them to not destroy our ships), which were the only ones they didn't steal. I admit, we were naive.

I fully realize the mistakes that were made leading up to the culmination of this scam. Research afterwards has shown that this scam was not unique and has already been described in sufficient detail in other posts. FloppieTheBanjoClown, who has admitted on this forum to running scams, was one of the main orchestrators of this.

I believe Freedom Unchained to be a corporation which exists for the sole purpose of running this scam.

It bothers me that some people see themselves as decent people in their daily lives, but become career criminal sociopaths as soon as they turn on their computer. If nothing else, scams like this are destructive because they degrade people's ability to trust others, if only on a subconscious level, both in game and out.

I release snarky comments are likely, but rational discussion would be better.

Dude hang in there in 3-4 years you will tell this story and laugh at what a noob you where.

The value of trust in themepark games is very low. usually the mechanics make it impossible or at least stupid to attack your own side. Trust is therefore assumed and is meaningless.
In EVE trust is earned. Being cautious and wise with your trust is a large part of what makes eve compelling.
The reason null sec and low sec revolves around corps is it allows the fostering of sufficeint trust to have a meaningful impact in these zones.
Blindly trusting everyone is eve is foolish but it is pretty foolish IRL too.
Trusting no one is the path to a lonely and unfufilling game in eve and so too in life.
Betraying trust can have huge consequences in eve and so too in life.
Winning in a game at the expense of others is the nature and purpose of competitive games.
Winning in life at the expense of others is morally reprehensible and is the reason people dislike politicians, bankers, stock brokers and lawyers amongst others.

Thanks for the (mostly) encouraging replies.

Unfortunately we had a little bit more to lose than a typical 1 month player because it was not only my assets but also all of my brother's as well, which was considerably more than mine.

I realize it may seem that I am criticizing one of EVE's most central attributes - its extreme freedom in comparison to most other games. I don't think I am though. My brother and I were both very experienced at another "sandbox" game, Ultima Online (though it has become much less of a sandbox in its later years, it started as one of the first of them), and because of that I think I have some perspective on the concept.

I have no problem with the kinds of risks that players may choose to assume in normal game-play. I was even ganked earlier that day while messing around at a low-sec data site, which I had no ethics based objections to.

Perhaps it is because I was there to experience the sickening level of deception that took place, but I believe what happened to us went beyond what someone should be able to do to another player, even in a sandbox - we both literally lost everything. Even with my lack of experience I contest the idea that scamming is a central tenant of EVE (perhaps it is in practice but it should not be). I also contest the idea that because something is digital it is therefore "imaginary" - check the (digital) balance of your bank account and tell yourself that's only imaginary. I realize that is an extreme example (though maybe not so extreme), but it is valid nonetheless and therefore I maintain that there is some real level of harm done by such activity.

Thanks again, your comments on the whole were much more constructive that what I was expecting.

Dear Elencia,

Welcome to Psychopaths Online.
The game where being an ******* is a way of life :(

One of your freedom unchained corpmates outright told his plan openly on his twitch.tv stream (I'm not going to say who). When (s)he can get away with that maybe you need to look into better security because I knew this was going to happen long ago.

Also don't be the typical 'I'm new and these thiefs are psychopaths" poster. Read up about a game before you play it (especially in a subscription game), that way you know what you are getting into. It is so unbearable to see how these new players keep coming in and saying that this game goes to far when, in all reality, they should have known about it before they joined up.

It is ridiculous to expect me to have been aware of all of this. At this point I've read several pages on different scams and odds are I still don't know about half of them.

More importantly, I stated what my intention for the post was - to get it in print that Freedom Unchained is running that scam. Anything beyond that was just my opinion on the situation/people.

At the time I didn't understand what was going on. I agree my brother should have known what was going on, but for whatever reason he unfortunately did not.

I didn't say I had only read several pages. What I said was that I read several pages specifically on scams. Do you understand the important differentiation between those two things? Also, if "less than 1% of the player base won't read this thread", that means that more than 99% of EVE players will read this thread. I doubt that, but if you insist my writings are that popular... ; )

Thanks for the heads up. Does that mean if my car can be taken (just as the cash from my bank account can be taken) that it is fake too?

Is it so surprising that someone in my position would be ignorant of the intricacies of the situation I was unexpected placed in? Perhaps I am going too easy on myself in that regard, but doesn't seem like something I should be embarrassed to say I didn't know about.