Student Makes a Million Online, Gets Deported 309
Via Kotaku, a story at the Mainichi daily news about an enterprising exchange student that got himself deported. Wang Yue Si, a Chinese student who went to Japan on a student visa, found himself in need of some spending money. Since he was a gamer, he decided to make some cash by selling virtual items online. He was so successful, the cops noticed. From the article: "He started selling items such as weapons and currency for online games through an Internet auction site in April this year, without obtaining the appropriate residency status. Wang, living in Kumamoto, has admitted that he sold the virtual goods for about 6 million yen ($US 1.3 Million), in violation of the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Law. A bank worker became suspicious when Wang regularly sent money back home to China and alerted police in August, prompting Kumamoto police officers to investigate the student."
These stories get more common... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd love to see a broad treatment of law-meets-games-meets-money from someone who actually understands the issues involved. I'm tangentially interested in all those things but I don't really have enough background to put these sorts of things into perspective.
Anyone?
Lucky he wasn't hung.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Four friends are playing a game of Monopoly. One guest turns to the other guest and offers to sell Park Place for $10 real dollars. You're the host, what would you do? That's right, tell the cheating bastard to go home.
Well well (Score:5, Interesting)
People with misplaced priorties (Score:4, Interesting)
Gambling, porn, online gaming... let's add drugs to the list too. It's all a waste of money. Porn is free as far as I'm concerned, gambling is often too risky the way some addicts play, and drugs waste in an obvious way. But paying for "virtual stuff" in a virtual world?! That's a waste of money and time.
It's not like I don't understand it -- I recall calling in sick to work more than once so I could finish a level of X-Wing versus Tie Fighter... the pay check started to reflect my obsession and I made corrections. I wish other people could learn that lesson.
Re:1 Million Dollars? (Score:2, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Idiot. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Correction, please. (Score:2, Interesting)
How good of a salesman does it take to convince people to fork a million dollars over a period of a couple months, in exchange for a couple bits on a computer? Do you even have an idea of what that kind of talent is worth?
You're jealous.
You're bitter.
You wish you thought of it first.
You wish you had the balls and the skills required to pull it off.
What I want to know is... (Score:2, Interesting)
Seems excessive (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What I want to know is... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Inmates watching inmates (Score:3, Interesting)
I work for a bank. You'd be surprised at the level of monitoring these days. Particularly because employees are under instruction not to inform you of any suspicion they may have, for fear of alerting a potential criminal that his game is up.
Behold [wikipedia.org]
You may not consider wikipedia 'credible', but a google search for "suspicious activity reporting" [google.com] or "Anti money laundering guidelines [google.com] brings up a wealth of credible documentation. I just linked to wikipedia because the information was presented in an easy to digest format.
Re:Inmates watching inmates (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Japan is strict (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, especially if you're Chinese, although it's sort of a good idea to avoid even the appearance of wrongdoing if you're a resident alien in any country.
Re:wonders of the tubes.... (Score:1, Interesting)
Selling Linux on CDRs while on vacation in Berlin, Germany - Poznan, Poland and Praha, Ceske Republica and mailing the CDRs to Norway and the minute after taking support calls from customers in Oslo, Norway and in the process making an awful more pocket money than the guy sitting next to me at the Internet Cafeteria. Then paying for a few used Nokia GSM phones in North Germany with PayPal and having them shipped to my girlfriend. She sells a few of them to pay for groceries and gives 1 of them to her daughter. She sends me an SMS that says "Thank You
It is time for planet earth to start walking the Libertarian road........
Most activities dont need regulation and cannot be regulated.
If you try to stop me I will just walk around you and continue my business while
I wonder why them boneheaded pinko Marxists never seem to learn.
I guess they will never learn.
Re:Idiot. (Score:2, Interesting)
Overstaying your visa, working under the table (especially Americans teaching English), etc is very common over here. The police generally don't give a fuck (and can't), unless they want to make an example of you like for this Chinese guy. Channeling millions of yen out of the country, legally or not, is one of the things that WILL piss them off.
ps. Nice ad hominem there on the internets, good job. "Durr hurr hurr you must be American lololol."
pps. I'm not American.
Re:Idiot. (Score:1, Interesting)
The MMORPG companies are depending on certain tasks in these games to take a sufficiently long time to perform so that the players will stay subscribed. By providing a shortcut, RMT reduces the amount of time the companies can expect the players to be subscribed. Or, it means the MMORPG company will have to make the tasks take longer or items more rarer than previously designed in order to retain the customer.
Even if a player does not buy gold through RMT, they are affected indirectly by the methods that the RMT famers use to make their gold. In the case of the game I play, RMT farmers control the price of rare items and useful consumables. They use hacks in the game to obtain exclusivity to certain items. The RMT farmers control pricing on these rare items, either selling through direct RMT the opportunity to obtain the item or selling the items for a high price (real or MMORPG money). They also use bots to obtain ingredients and synth items that are widely used, and sell them for a sufficiently low price that it is unprofitable for any others to make. The use of bots and hacks violates the terms of service of the game, of course.
It should not be fair that someone ruins a game and makes millions doing so.
Furthermore, this guy is very likely a frontman who skims a very high percentage of the payment. Is that fair to the people who actually do the gold farming? Do you realize how many people it takes to farm the the equivalent in MMORPG money that this guy apparently made in real money? In the game I play, if the farmer was playing legitimately (i.e. not using bots or hacks), it should take about 24 hours of continously playing to make the equivalent of $40 USD in MMORPG money. This guy made AT LEAST $1.3 million in real money. That's 325,000 hours of equivalent playing, which works out to be over 37 times the number of hours that there are in a year. And that's only assuming the entire $40 goes to him. The actual amount the farmers make depends upon the take this guy had and the number of accounts each farmer controlled.
Re:It's Virtual Earnings - Why Pay Taxes? (Score:3, Interesting)
Since he was a student, there is the natural expectation that he would be bringing money into the country, rather than actively sending it out. If had just deposited the money into a Chinese bank account, the Japanese authorities probably wouldn't have been any the wiser.
This does open up an interesting concept of work. If you create something (online game artifact, video, animation, shareware application) which you do in your spare time while abroad, then market it online, does that constitute work?
Re:Inmates watching inmates (Score:2, Interesting)
I attempted to wire some money home (about US$3K) to my home bank account via the post office bank. I got a call 3 days later telling me that they didn't like my "reason for transfer" that I'd entered on the form. I put: "to wire myself money to my home account" both in Japanese and in English. Which is the truth.
After bringing in my boss to make sure i"m getting the information correctly, she tells me that they are now stopping all wire transfers in Japan and questioning people why they're sending money. They're trying to be "watchful" for North Korean terrorists. Apparently, when I'd told the guy that I was sending money home to pay for a plane ticket I'd purchased, they felt that 3000 dollars was too much for a plane ticket. I told the guy at the post office that I was sending it home in larger quantities because it costs money to wire money into my bank account.
He then apologized and they transferred my money. Stupid thing is that my the transfer came in too late and I ended up stuck with a 35 dollar service charge for overdrawing my bank account when my credit card company took their payment.
3 stupid things I've learned from this:
1. Japan thinks I"m a North Korean Terrorist.
2. Japan is incredibly trusting - they asked for no documentation to back any of my claims.
3. This process, like a lot of processes in Japan, is completely unfounded, inefficient, and incompetent.
BTW - I am a Japanese citizen.