Chinese World of Warcraft Frauds Sent To Prison

Steven Bogos

The Taco Man
Jan 17, 2013
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Chinese World of Warcraft Frauds Sent To Prison


Ten men were sentenced to prison by a Chinese court for defrauding up to 11,500 World of Warcraft accounts.

Ten men in the Zhejiang province of China have been found guilty of defrauding up to 11,500 World of Warcraft accounts, and sentenced to prison terms of up to two years. The group's leader, a man called "Chen", reportedly organized a small workspace as his team's base of operations, and set to work "flipping" WoW accounts for an excess of $10,800 in profit.

Chen and his group worked their scam by purchasing stolen WoW accounts for $1 each. They would then "gut" them by selling all of the account's gold and gear for around $3 per account. This gave them ~$2 profit per account, and considering more than 11k accounts were pilfered, you can see how it adds up.

Chen took the hardest rap, being fined $8,000 and sentenced to two years in jail, while the rest of his team will serve smaller jail terms and a fine of around $1,000 each. All of the hardware used and funds gained in the operation has been seized by the police.

While it's certainly nice to see some justice doled out to these criminals, Chen's group were just the "middle men," and the shady individuals that they were purchasing these hacked accounts from in the first place are presumably still out there.

There's no word from Blizzard on how the trial and sentence would affect the players affected by Chen and his cohorts, although reportedly, all of his victims were also Chinese.

Source: Kotaku [http://www.zjol.com.cn/]

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FalloutJack

Bah weep grah nah neep ninny bom
Nov 20, 2008
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People of China, attend please!

We don't want or need your help to give the video game industry or its user base a bad name. Plenty of people are already on the board for that. Please stop.

Thank you.
 

VanBasten

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Aug 20, 2009
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Steven Bogos said:
While it's certainly nice to see some justice doled out to these criminals

Are you honestly saying that you believe that 2 years in a Chinese prison for pilfering some virtual gold is actually justice?
 

Boris Goodenough

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Jul 15, 2009
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VanBasten said:
Steven Bogos said:
While it's certainly nice to see some justice doled out to these criminals

Are you honestly saying that you believe that 2 years in a Chinese prison for pilfering some virtual gold is actually justice?
You are right, it's too little...
 

Auberon

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Aug 29, 2012
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Next thing we know, these guys are used as gold farmers for the guys running prisons. Something resembling a coincidence might have just happened.
 

Albino Boo

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Jun 14, 2010
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VanBasten said:
Steven Bogos said:
While it's certainly nice to see some justice doled out to these criminals

Are you honestly saying that you believe that 2 years in a Chinese prison for pilfering some virtual gold is actually justice?
Lets put this into perspective. The average Chinese income is $6000, so this guy stole the equivalent of 1 and 1/4 years income. In UK terms thats about £32k. In most countries you could expect a custodial sentence for stealing the equivalent.
 

SecondPrize

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Mar 12, 2012
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Hundred percent certainty the stolen accounts were sold to these guys by a Blizzard employee.
 

Some_weirdGuy

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Nov 25, 2010
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VanBasten said:
albino boo said:
so this guy stole
What exactly did these guys steal?
Does it not state quite clearly in the original post that he was stealing the assets of an account at approximately a $2 per account profit after gutting?

Or do you think knowingly buying stolen property somehow makes it not stealing? :X Cause i got some bad news for you if you do, at least in the eyes of the law...
 

VanBasten

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Aug 20, 2009
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Some_weirdGuy said:
Or do you think knowingly buying stolen property somehow makes it not stealing?
So what do we do to with people that bought gold of of those guys? Should they be extradited to the Chinese government to stand trial?
 

Athinira

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Jan 25, 2010
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VanBasten said:
Some_weirdGuy said:
Or do you think knowingly buying stolen property somehow makes it not stealing?
So what do we do to with people that bought gold of of those guys? Should they be extradited to the Chinese government to stand trial?
In all fairness, the end customer can't reasonably know whether or not the gold he is buying comes from stolen accounts or farm bots. Buying from the latter isn't a crime (although it is against the WoW EULA/ToS).

I think the approach of going for the dealer rather than the customer is a reasonable approach in this case. We've seen similar from the anti-piracy brigade in the last 5 years, where they - instead of targeting pirates - target sites etc. that specializes in offering og provides easy access to pirated material (streaming sites, torrent sites, torrent search engines etc.). It's an approach that makes sense.
 

Baldr

The Noble
Jan 6, 2010
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VanBasten said:
albino boo said:
so this guy stole
What exactly did these guys steal?

The equivalent is like going to paypal and stealing a $2 out of people's paypals accounts, it not much damage that can't be restored, but it does cost Blizzard to go back and restore those accounts, not to mention lost customers who don't want to deal with it.
 

Baldr

The Noble
Jan 6, 2010
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SecondPrize said:
Hundred percent certainty the stolen accounts were sold to these guys by a Blizzard employee.
100% certain they are not. There are tons of less reputable websites out there, most stolen accounts come from data collection, I know IGE, sub of Affinity Media was a company that might have sold email and forum passwords from sites like Thottbot and Allakhazam. If they know a certain email is attached to a Battle.net account, they use brute force programs to hack passwords from them.
 

SecondPrize

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Mar 12, 2012
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Baldr said:
SecondPrize said:
Hundred percent certainty the stolen accounts were sold to these guys by a Blizzard employee.
100% certain they are not. There are tons of less reputable websites out there, most stolen accounts come from data collection, I know IGE, sub of Affinity Media was a company that might have sold email and forum passwords from sites like Thottbot and Allakhazam. If they know a certain email is attached to a Battle.net account, they use brute force programs to hack passwords from them.
yeah, there are fishing scams. There are also Blizzard employees selling lists of inactive accounts. Blizz is hip deep in that shit.
 

Dark Knifer

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May 12, 2009
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Seems pretty straightforward. China's one of the few countries that treat white collar crime seriously.
 

Imperioratorex Caprae

Henchgoat Emperor
May 15, 2010
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SecondPrize said:
Baldr said:
SecondPrize said:
Hundred percent certainty the stolen accounts were sold to these guys by a Blizzard employee.
100% certain they are not. There are tons of less reputable websites out there, most stolen accounts come from data collection, I know IGE, sub of Affinity Media was a company that might have sold email and forum passwords from sites like Thottbot and Allakhazam. If they know a certain email is attached to a Battle.net account, they use brute force programs to hack passwords from them.
yeah, there are fishing scams. There are also Blizzard employees selling lists of inactive accounts. Blizz is hip deep in that shit.
Sources please? Otherwise thats all conjecture. Before you accuse, have proof.