Virtual Bank Woes

bobmorning writes "EVE Online's largest player-controlled virtual bank, Ebank, just can't seem to catch a break these days. A few months after it was revealed that the company had been defrauded of a staggering amount of virtual cash, it turns out that the institution's digital vaults are far more barren than many realized, leading to an in-game freezing of accounts for any individual or organization that happened to have invested any InterStellar Kredits (ISK) with the bank. Early this summer, it came to light that a veteran EVE player (known only as 'Ricdic') had embezzled — and then sold in the real world — over 200 billion ISK from Ebank, causing a run on the virtual financial institution. However, this was just the beginning of the problems for the player-owned bank. Recently-installed Ebank Chairman Ray McCormack admitted that the bank had been mismanaged, and rules, safeguards, and controls were not enforced. As a result, it's been revealed that Ebank is 380 billion ISK poorer thanks to a number of defaulted loans. Because of the aforementioned mismanagement, it apparently took the bank's new officers a while to figure out just how far in the red their institution is."

Re:How much?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well if he sold it for the going standard rate, which is unlikely... about 4 thousand USD. Though if he bided his time he could get 6k in afew months at his own isk selling site.

Re:How much?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been playing EVE since 2004 and the current going rate for 1(one) billion ISK is around $50, although if you purchase 10 billion or more there are discounts to be had. So, all in all 200 billion ISK is around $10,000 in real US currency.

Re:Is this not fraud or some other real world crim

[Mycroft_VIII]

No but it is a violation of the TOS, and can result in both the seller and buyer's acounts getting banned and the isk deleted.
There are legit (ccp allowed) methods to turn $$$ into isk. you buy game time, eigther as code or an ingame item (plex) and sell that for isk.

Mycroft.

Re:Don't trust anyone

[Manfred Maccx]

Because the bounty system won't works. It will simply be abused. The bank put a bounty on the frauder head, the frauder get one of his friends to kill him or even use an alt to do it, and simply share the bounty money with him. The bounty system is more a bragging system. The more on your head, the more you are supposed to be "hot". Most people with a large bounty on their head try to not get kill because they are proud to have that bounty on them, it's not really because they car about dying and loosing that ship they are in at the moment. So, in that context, putting a bounty on a frauder, will not do have any impact or do any good.