Gold Farmer Sells Virtual Gold to Buy Real Gold, Has it Stolen

Steven Bogos

The Taco Man
Jan 17, 2013
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Gold Farmer Sells Virtual Gold to Buy Real Gold, Has it Stolen


Katrina Fincham made over $75,000 farming gold in World of Warcraft, which she ironically converted into bars of gold bullion.

Katrina Fincham, an Australian nurse, made over $75,000 farming gold in World of Warcraft. When the piles of cash started pouring in from her little side business, she decided to make her assets a little more solid, purchasing $75,000 worth of solid gold bullion. It would have been a sound investment... had the gold bars not been stolen from a wall safe in her Adelaide home.

Gold farming is a perfectly legitimate practice in Australia - as long as farmers include details on their annual tax return. As such, Fincham had the gold bars that she earned through her farming insured legally through insurance company AAMI. But AAMI is refusing to pay up, accusing Fincham of only converting the money into gold bars so that it could be purposely stolen. Fincham sued her insurer, who proceeded to issue a counter-claim, accusing her of insurance fraud.

Fincham had previously set up a real-world business: Virtual Item Sales, in which she would often work late hours to meet online demand. On any given night, she claimed to make multiple exchanges of up to $700 each - and she'd be paid in cash, finding checks or money orders inconvenient.

With the advent of the lawsuit, Virtual Item Sales has collapsed, as her former customers are now constantly being harassed by insurance investigators. Fincham has had to sell her house to cover the costs of the lawsuit.

To add insult to injury, it turns out that it was an inside job after all, though Fincham herself had little part in it. Her then-boyfriend, who she'd met online, tipped off the criminals in exchange for a paltry $500.

Source: Player Attack [http://www.playerattack.com/news/2013/08/13/australian-gold-farmer-sues-over-75k-stolen-gold/]

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Helston

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Aug 14, 2008
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Steven Bogos said:
Gold farming is a perfectly legitimate practice in Australia - as long as farmers include details on their annual tax return.
But it's still against World of Warcraft's Terms of Service, and ultimately makes the game worse for almost everyone. All the lawsuits and her selling her house are dreadful (and happening to a nurse no less), but I have no qualms with the karma of having her gold stolen.
 

evilneko

Fall in line!
Jun 16, 2011
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Nihao! And farmsteal some gold!

Wait, what's that? The farmer is Australian?

Er, g'day m8?
 

Saulkar

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Aug 25, 2010
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That... is... shitty. I do not approve of gold farming any more than I condemn it, ambivalence is the word of the day. Ultimately I do not approve of anything that happened to her and wish to see her boyfriend prosecuted and the gold either retrieved or her insurance company doing its fucking job.

P.S. I hope the revelations that (almost) prove she was not committing insurance fraud put her in a favourable position in court.
 

Karadalis

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Apr 26, 2011
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500 dollars for gold worth 75.000 dollars...

Not only was her boyfriend a scumbag steve... he also sucked hardcore at math...
 

luvd1

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Jan 25, 2010
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So where are the police in this matter? Gold has been stolen, the ex is involed. Sounds like a simple case to me.
 

Lil_Rimmy

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Mar 19, 2011
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What in the living fuck.

What.

What.

This is just fucking depressing. A nurse, who in case you people who don't live in Australia don't know, doesn't get paid a lot, does a perfectly legal gold-farming, which IS legal by Australian laws, think what you like, has a hilarious sense of humour and buys real gold, only to get SOLD OUT BY HER FUCKING BOYFRIEND FOR $500, THEN GET SUED BY HER INSURANCE COMPANY AND HAD TO SELL HER HOUSE.

That fucktard can go be fucking mugged, has his money stolen, have to sell his house to deal with the debts and then get fucking shot.

This is bloody disgraceful.
 

BanicRhys

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May 31, 2011
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Flame starving powers, activate!

While her punishment hardly fits her crime per se, I'm having a hard time feeling sorry for someone who is willing to profit off of something which has such a negative effect on so many other people.

Also, I can understand the boyfriend selling her out instead of taking the gold himself, but I cannot fathom why he did it for such a small amount of money.
 

Teoes

Poof, poof, sparkles!
Jun 1, 2010
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luvd1 said:
So where are the police in this matter? Gold has been stolen, the ex is involed. Sounds like a simple case to me.
The link says that the case is continuing in court. The theft of the gold occurred in 2008.
 

JediMB

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Oct 25, 2008
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BanicRhys said:
Serves her right.

Person profits off of selfishly screwing with a game's economy and breaking the contract she agreed to when she signed up.
Person has it all stolen (I wouldn't be surprised if she was getting that gold by hacking others' accounts).
Yes, contributing slightly to the imbalance of a video game's virtual economy totally means you should have your life ruined. Also, wild speculation on how she did her business is a completely valid argument against her.

Sarcasm.
 

shirkbot

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Apr 15, 2013
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The moral of the story is secretly not to buy gold. That, and if you're going to have guys stealing $75,000 of the stuff from your girlfriend, you should probably ask more than $500.

In all seriousness, I hope that guy gets a decent jail sentence and that this woman manages to get her life back together. Shame on her ex, and shame on her insurance company.
 

fix-the-spade

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Feb 25, 2008
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shirkbot said:
The moral of the story is secretly not to buy Gold.
I'd say the moral is to leave it in a safe deposit box and not in a cheapass wall safe that your scumbag boyfriend can get the key to.
Walk into a bank with $75k of legally obtained Gold, they'll be delighted to talk to you. The other moral is never trust your insurance company, because they will do anything to avoid paying out if they don't want to. They must have spent way more than the seventy five thousand on legal fees by now, but the irony is probably lost on them.
 

Legion

Were it so easy
Oct 2, 2008
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shirkbot said:
The moral of the story is secretly not to buy gold. That, and if you're going to have guys stealing $75,000 of the stuff from your girlfriend, you should probably ask more than $500.
I'd have thought the moral was don't tell online boyfriends that you have 75K of gold in a safe and not to get insurance.

Obviously the boyfriend is the one at fault not her. Although clearly she dodged a bullet considering he is so stupid that he got $500 from a tip off that gave the thieves 150 times that amount.

In the UK insurance companies are rip-off merchants. The amount of claims that actually go through are tiny. They almost always have a loop hole available to avoid paying up. It's why I only have it on my car, due to it being a legal requirement for driving. I'd never spend money on it optionally, because I don't trust them to pay up if I am entitled to it.
 
Sep 14, 2009
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JediMB said:
BanicRhys said:
Serves her right.

Person profits off of selfishly screwing with a game's economy and breaking the contract she agreed to when she signed up.
Person has it all stolen (I wouldn't be surprised if she was getting that gold by hacking others' accounts).
Yes, contributing slightly to the imbalance of a video game's virtual economy totally means you should have your life ruined. Also, wild speculation on how she did her business is a completely valid argument against her.

Sarcasm.
agreed. No one is making you buy that gold in WoW, and it is perfectly legal in Australia and she is doing it as a means to make some extra income...legally in case someone missed that.


I really hope some super lawyer helps her kick fucking ass in court and that BF goes to jail for quite a while. Fuckheads the lot of em.
 

Amir Kondori

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Apr 11, 2013
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I hope she gets her money from the insurance company, that sucks to have your boyfriend allow you to be robber for a measly $500. What a terrible person.
 

Amir Kondori

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Apr 11, 2013
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shirkbot said:
The moral of the story is secretly not to buy gold. That, and if you're going to have guys stealing $75,000 of the stuff from your girlfriend, you should probably ask more than $500.

In all seriousness, I hope that guy gets a decent jail sentence and that this woman manages to get her life back together. Shame on her ex, and shame on her insurance company.
Yeah, buying $75,000 of gold bullion is the kind of thing a crazy person who fears the collapse of world order in the next 5 years does. Kind of stupid, there were many better investments she could have been making.
 

RicoADF

Welcome back Commander
Jun 2, 2009
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BanicRhys said:
Serves her right.

Person profits off of selfishly screwing with a game's economy and breaking the contract she agreed to when she signed up.
Person has it all stolen (I wouldn't be surprised if she was getting that gold by hacking others' accounts).
So someone having their life screwed up because she LEGALLY made extra money from a game (by providing a service basically) is a good thing ay?

Yeah mate get your priorities straight, WoW is just a game and if some people want to use their time in said game to make some money from those that don't want to grind (because grinding is not fun and normal people play games to.... have fun? Funny that) then it's their legal right to do so.

OT: Well now that the culprit has been caught the cops will do their thing and the courts can sort the crap out (plus a few extra to cover the costs she incurred, which her insurance company can go after the asshole for).
 

Not Lord Atkin

I'm dead inside.
Oct 25, 2008
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I'm expecting an update on this when the case is over. Seems to me like the insurance company is completely baseless in their claims. They refuse to do their job that they have been paid for for because of what? It's too much money? It could have been an insurance fraud even though they have absolutely no basis for such a claim? And they even have the fucking audacity to file a counter-claim. I am speechless.

God damn it, I just hope she recovers the full amount. And the litigation costs.
 

somonels

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Oct 12, 2010
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Why isn't Gina Rinehart blaming the lazy officials for discriminating such a hard working entrepreneur on the basis of her gender?