GOM defrauded again?!

Anshe didn't just start - she's be selling L$ for awhile.

I suggest you be careful with accusations.

And your statement(s) are libelous - there is no proof whatsoever that IGE had anything to do with any of it, or Anshe - maligning either of them is stupid and childish.

And Linden Lab could take a stand and cancel the IGE accounts as a vehicle for theft. I am *not* asserting that IGE caused this, but they were certainly an accessory to it, and we do have a tradition in RL of shutting down otherwise legitimate business that happen to launder money on the side.

Alas, if recent experience is any indication, the Linden action on this will be just to edit this post as defamatory.

Actually, now I'm pissed. Yes Philip, I said I'd stop Linden bashing a month or so ago out of deference to you as a person partially predicated on your statements to me that you were diligently working on things. So here is what is *looks* like you are working on: coddling the singular land barron, aiding and abetting fraud, providing shrugs of indifference to the first credible, reliable L$ exchange, expressing no opinion (even when you had the facts at hand) on the second burgeoning SL-to-web service and hoping it will sort itself out, asking people for opinions on how the forums should be handled and why people would erect money trees for newbs. Throughout all this you wave your hands about privacy concerns and what a caring company you are. Bullshit! That said, I don't think you malicious, just lackadasical. If you actually believe your own statements about the potential of SL then do something to help perpetuate it. Yes, it may involve some intestinal fortitude, even the possibility of sticking your neck out for the people who believed in you. And sticking your neck out involves risk, ask Mr. Hale. But it doth appear that you would prefer that others risk more to support your endeavors than you are yourselves. You made an empty space desirable enough to have others build your content for you and you appear to have extended that into the auxillary services that are making your world more valuable and getting you ever more press. And yes, you can control my opinions when you pry them from my cold, dead fingers or ban me.

I am so dreadfully sorry that GOM has been scammed once again. This is my feeble attempt at shameing people who can actually do something about it into doing so.

It seems LL has asked the community's opinions on important issues repeatedly and yet nothing substantial has changed re: the security of the SL financial infrastructure. The community has spoken publicly in several threads here, and I've spoken privately to Robin and Philip, and others at LL.

Hell, Lindens were not able or/interested/willing or ?????? to get my former business partner to agree to meet with me and a Linden rep. inWorld on 1/14, two days after I was locked out of SLEx. to talk about the situation in an effort to prevent any serious disruptions to either SLEx or the L$ we held on account. At that time, which was before it went public 4 days later on 1/18, there was nearly $500,000L deposited in the Exchange Street account. Smaller compared to what's deposited in the GOM account - but still, significant amounts of OTHER PEOPLE's L$.

My conclusion - LL will not provide real leadership and involvement, even when they have a direct stake - and so our financial infrastructure remains vulnerable to abuses of various types, and will continue to until some fundamental changes are made.


_/_/

Did someone say boycott?

~Ulrika~

I thought the only reason GOM decided to stay in business after the last fraud was Linden Lab's -- specifically Philip's -- promises to support GOM in cases like this? To now essentially tell them, "tough shit, talk to IGE," is, in my professional and personal opinion, beyond comprehension.

I've been talking to several buddies of mine in world about buying a sim, so this is not blowing smoke, but hearing the way Linden treats some of its GREATEST promoters and people, I don't see why I'm even here. I've been IM'ing Philip for over two months now trying to get him to demo a really cool service that took a total of three months to develop and completely implement and I haven't gotten so much as a single word response from him, to my emails or my IMs.

Linden Labs is rude and if they do NOT step in and do something on behalf of GOM, they are accomplices with the fraudsters, too.

How the Hell does somebody steal multiple PayPal accounts?

Please forgive the simp question, and it is rhetorical; not an invitation for someone to post a how-to manual (as though any of you good folks would). I'm just blowing off a little steam, and I am beginning to wonder if PayPal is a weak system after all. And I really don't have a hacker's perspective, to help me figure out whether I should just drop them altogether.

How the *HELL* ... malicious keystroke grabbers downloaded to unprotected PCs? OK, the question was semi-rhetorical after all. After reading Anshe's recent message about some trouble her merchants had been having with folks apparently retracting payments after they'd been credited to the recipient's account...is PayPal just totally caveat emptor?

Zeppi, I just came in-game and yanked my modest stash out of your ATM. I did it strictly because I have some fairly heavy commitments in the near future, and I have to avoid unexpected downtime at your Grid terminals.

I generally keep about $25L on my person at any given time, and love having a reliable "banking" service to protect me from impulse purchases, to say nothing of being able to execute the occasional trade.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, my little drop-in-the-bucket nest egg and I will be back the instant you give the "all clear."

== danny d.

This is clearly none of your business, Ulrika, and I suspect you have a vested interest in IGE.

Groan.

Anyone have some aspirin?

So yup, the leaderboard checks out. A new AV who I dasn't name entered with L$300,000 this week. Linden Lab has the IP address and more importantly the verified credit card of the scammer. They could very easily report that information to either the credit card company (those folks *do* care about fraud) or the authorities.

Oh, I forgot, the credit card is just for age verification. Never mind.

Very sorry to hear about this, Ricky and Jamie! Hope you can get this worked out soon!


Over the weekend, I got *four different* fraudulent (is that spelled right? meh, I'm tired) emails from people trying to get my Paypal info. I recognized them all almost immediately as fake, but *a lot* of people don't realize that they're fake. I dunno if the scammers were bored this past weekend, or if it's because somebody is watching what I've been selling on eBay.....but that seems like a lot to me.

Don't you get those emails? "Your Account Out of Date. Please enter all your passwords to update your account. Otherwise your Account will be cancelled." Horrible grammar. Bad spelling. And somehow, a surprising number of f!ing morons enter all their info.



Our account is as always, very safe. Your deposited L$ is not at risk.

The problem is that someone bought L$ at our site from legitimate SL users and then reversed the payments. My ATMs have already delivered the L$ and now I'm out the cash too. Of course I could reverse all the trades that the scammer did leaving my customers holding the bag, but that's not the way GOM works.

Anyways, don't worry about your L$. Of course yank them if you like. No harm either way.

J

Ok there is a couple of things I am struck by in this thread so far:

1) Jamie's post is full of conjecture about IGE, and has been followed by nearly textbook examples of libel. Is there anything linking this fraud to IGE, other than that the L$ in question were sold to IGE? I don't know what on earth he is talking about in terms of IGE's slowness - whenever I have used the site, my sale order has been picked up within a few mins of placing it on the site, and the money is in my account in about 15 minutes. It is very conceivable that someone could perpetrate a fraud on both sites.

2) Linden Lab's stance about not retracting the L$ makes sense - if you have no tangible proof that IGE was involved, why should the burden then be shifted to IGE? They paid out USD in the sale of these L$ - pulling them back with no proof is crazy. I don't blame LL for staying out of the middle of this. Rallying against them because of this fraud is misplaced. I am sure GOM wants LL to side with them and drop everything - but they have to remain objective and also not expose themselves in the process.

3) I hope this thread is not censored all to hell in the morning, though I imagine it will be. Probably no need to remove the libel since it will be edited out later.

I've swallowed all mine Nolan


Danny fraudulent paypal accounts are created via. identity theft which includes stolen credit cards and bank account numbers. If you have several stolen identities, then you can do lots more damage by setting up multiple fraudulent paypal accounts and make a number of fraudulent GOM transactions that may go unnoticed as opposed to one or two big transactions.

Charge backs are a different issue; PayPal does not offer buyer/seller protection to prevent charge backs involving virtual sales.

Months ago, I advocated to LL to get together with their $8m investor (Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay, the company who now owns PayPal), and get a working group organized in San Francisco to provide some industry leadership and advocate for PayPal to take the revolutionary 1st step and set up buyer/seller protections for virtual transactions to prevent charge backs.

As recently as yesterday I suggested a way to set up SL accounts that could help secure accounts that were holding large amounts of L$ for business purposes.

Guess all we can do is keep trying.

You can't withdraw funds if a sell order was placed for that amount, and there's no way to cancel a sell order when your site blocks logins. Basically funds are locked.

Ha ha! Ulrika pounces on pandastrong and tickles him until he can't breathe.

~Ulrika~

I've thrown together a fix that I see some of you have noticed. We're adding a limit so that only avatars that are 30 days old or older can deposit (both cash and L$). The 30 days was chosen to be large enough to make it more difficult for stolen credit cards to be involved. The number of days might change in the future.

Anyways, PayPal has chosen this particular moment to go completely non-linear. It's posting all sorts of old transactions to us, and of course not posting my test payments. This means I can't finish testing my patches.

I expect things will be cleared up in the morning, and I will work as hard as I can at getting us back up and running as soon as possible.

Tom and I will decide on some way to compensate you for our downtime.

In the meantime, your L$ are accessible through the ATMs as usual. Don't think you've been locked away from your L$!

J

See, Ulrika has a soft side.

Compensate us???? We should all be taking you out for some beers.

Yep I have gotten fake Paypal info asking emails.
I have also got one supposedly from my cable
company , all fake. They make it look like
you need to "verify" your account. Rather
mean little buggers.

I agree you with you 100% Cristiano, even as a strong supporter of GOM and having never used IGE myself. All of these allegations with zero evidence to support them is absurd.

I for one am GLAD Linden Labs isn't stepping in and jumping the gun here without some rational thinking and investigating done first. It's completely possible for someone to scam both GOM and IGE, and even play them against each other.

To say that IGE is a vehicle for theft is to say that GOM is. Afterall, the fraud was initiated through GOM. Just because someone used IGE to sell off their stolen L$ that they acquired from GOM does not make IGE liable for anything. How were they supposed to know in real-time that the fraud was even taking place?

That's an absurd expectation. About as absurd as it is to expect Linden Labs to play the free lawyer in any incident of this matter. Doing so would completely strain all of Linden Labs resources and be the definate end of Second Life.

Bottom line, I'm disappointed with Zeppi's accusations though I understand his anger and frustration. I only hope that he will rethink, and retract his statements when rationalism sets in. Until then, I find it hard to endorse, or further support GOM in any way.

I drool over her math posts, even though I am completely computationally incompetent. However, I do have a cat named "Minus".

I think someone was logged in as their alt!

Oops! Yes, it's me, Rathe Underthorn. Didn't realize I was logged in this account. The purpose of this alt, is of course, to hold the funds for MetaAdverse.

Oh. Yeah. Phishing. Duh.

Get some sleep, DeGroot.

== danny d.