Porn Scam

Any ideas what to do about this scammer?

Two people have contacted me now complaining that they did not receive the product they bought for L$5,000 at the porn store in Lunalis. The purchase is supposed to provide them with a lifetime membership to a porn service. The notecard they recieve promises them "Instant account activation with an email address. Your personal login and password will be sent to you immediately."

The problem is I DON'T HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH THAT STORE, I DON'T SELL ANY SUCH PRODUCT and never have. Yet the notecard the buyers receive shows me as the creator. Obviously the seller took one of the notecards that my vendors give out and edited it for his own purposes.

The first victim contacted me last Feb., the second victim just a few days ago. I educated them both how to look at the vendor box they purchased from and see who the owner is, and to look at their transaction records to see who the money went to. The victim who contacted about this last Feb. confirms that he never did receive anything from the seller, even after many IM's. When this first happened I IM'd the seller and demanded he stop using my notecards in his scam. I never heard from him and he obviously has not changed anything. I also abuse reported him at that time.

The guy is not to bright, his profile lists his my space site.
Going there I found he lists his RL business name and website.
whois.net disclosed his name, business address and phone number and an email address. A google search on his name located his facebook site and a few others he frequents. A whitepages.com search produced a residential address and phone number. I was thinking of calling him up but it is in Australia so I have not yet.

I have not done anything further about this and am wondering what would be the most effective way to deal with this. I would like to hear if anyone has any suggestions.

I wonder what the porn laws are like in Australia? Hmmm actually I don't have any indication that he ever actually delivers any porn.

Call him. Give him a real big "welcome to reality" check.

And definitely tell him to make and use his own notecards. Maybe let him know that if anyone contacts you about HIS business dealings again you will pass them his info via email outside of SL.

I would definitely AR that

I wouldn't give his info out but I'm sure others could find it as well if they knew where to look *cough*

Although you can't give anyone else his RL info without being in violation of the TOS/Community Standards, you can 'educate' people on how to find this information themselves, I would think. I know nothing about the Australian legal system, but his victims may be able to take legal action.

I'd file an AR with all the info you have to LL, and advise the others to do the same. Probably nothing will come of it, but you can at least tell the violator that you filed the AR. I wouldn't tell him until after the other people get a chance to find him first, because he might get a clue and erase his tracks.

The topic of using notecards having some other person's name as creator came up just yesterday in another thread.

I can't fathom why LL would have set things up so that this is possible. Sure, they say they won't intervene in Resident-to-Resident disputes---but why actively PROMOTE disputes by permitting this sort of fraud?

Surely it can't be that difficult to prevent using another person's name as Creator on a notecard....

It is possible to make notecards no modify, it just never occured to me to do it, very few people do. I'm sure by now I have thousands of notecards in peoples inventories since I have been selling stuff in SL for 3+ years.

In addition to all the excellent advice above, it may cut out a lot of the nuisance factor for you to put a few lines very prominently in your profile, letting people know that this scam is nothing to do with you.

A very good idea (and one that wouldn't have occurred to me before reading the two threads in question).

File a DMCA notice with LL. Then pray real hard that they'll actually deal with it. From past experience, odds are somewhere between 0 and just a touch over 0.

If that doesn't work....maybe a phonecall to the perpetrator. Outside of hiring a lawyer and hitting yourself in the head with a hammer, there's not a lot that can be done - at least not in an expedient/efficient manner.


- Etain

If it were me, I'd send him a notecard (no copy of course ) listing ALL of the RL data you have on him, along with the vendor location and a message saying you're onto him and will be reporting him. I'd probably have to send all his SL info to his email address too, repeatedly from a dummy account if needed. I wouldn't imagine a guy like this owns land, so I'd contact whoever he rents his vendor space from, explain it to them, and hopefully get them to delete/return his vendor, or just boot him. Break down and call him.. if he blows you off or doesnt answer, set up some kind of 2-ring auto-dialer *evilgrin*. I might camp on his vendor and hammer LL with AR's till someone decides I'm too annoying to not deal with... or if they don't, I might park a lite client bot right next to his vendor with a scripted attachment that tells visitors that are close that this vendor machine has been reported for fraud. The old "transparent box over the vendor" trick comes to mind, maybe with an out of order sign. The list is long, and thats not even into the really fun stuff yet.. lol.

What would stop one from posting the info on a non-SL site?

Remind me not to do anything stupid around you.

Unfortunately there are occasions when you have no choice but to distribute a modifiable notecard e.g. if you want the notecard to be linked/embedded in another notecard, or if the notecard is user changeable configuration for a script.

Matthew

I'm not too enthused about the idea of taking this to RL--just out of self-preservation: who knows how much effort this person would expend to try to hack back for revenge? And who can really be 100% sure we've thought of everything in advance to protect our own privacy and security?

For that matter, I'd be a little concerned about whether I'd taken all the in-world precautions necessary. For example, I'm sure I've given out full-perm notecards in the past. God help me, I've given out full-perm scripts, so it's just a matter of time until those show up driving lolcubes somewhere.

But that does raise the question: why did he choose *your* notecard with which to run his scam, of all the full perm notecards out there? Probably just bad luck, but... if you have enemies...

Having read the various posts, I'm now seeing that it's possible to send a notecard even though someone else is listed as Creator, because a notecard is fundamentally an object, NOT a communications device.

It's just that we generally USE notecards as communications devices, and think of them that way. And many of us who are newer are going to receive a notecard and see the Creator and assume that the notecard is from the Creator. And then you get the type of problems the OP has had (as well as many other instances of fraud and evil-doing, no doubt).

So I see now that my call for LL to change the way notecards are configured was ill-advised. Notecards have to remain modifiable for certain purposes.

I'm wondering if the fix might be to change their names. "Notecard" carries too strong an implication of 'this is a communication from the Creator'-----when it very well might not be.

Maybe they should be called Text Objects or Objects Containing Text---anything that would alert people to remember that the Creator might NOT be the actual author of the words written down there.

I might do that, although I would not say or do anything illegal. My biggest concern there is he is either really stupid or the facebook link is a ruse to mislead any disgruntled customers and misdirect them towards some other innocent person. I don't think that is the case as I found some other things which make me think he is not that bright. But I am still being cautious.

Which is also why I have not named any names here or on other websites where I have discussed this problem. Anyone who really wants to know more can visit the land he owns where his store is.

Sending him the notecard is a good idea. He actually owns the land his store is on in Lunalis. If I had any idea how to make run a bot from a Mac computer I might consider that. The land is set to 3 minute auto return so the transparent box won't work, ohhh that gives me another idea. I might be able to script a box to replace itself every 2 minutes and 59 seconds.

More, more.

Probably just bad luck, I have freebie boxes out there with give note scripts and notecards in them. It appears he used one. I don't think I have made many enemies in SL, as I have not had any questionable dealings. The worst I have ever done is eject/ban a few griefers on my land. I will check his name on my ban list.

It's possible the guy didn't know how to create a note card and just re-used whatever card he had available which happened to be yours. Does his notecard say to contact you? Or are the customers the ones connecting the dots to you? It sounds like he may have gone about running his SL business in a dumb fashion but not in a mischievous way.

Right, the note card does not mention me, it just shows me as creator. Even if it was an innocent error originally, he is still stealing peoples money and not delivering the goods and he ignored my request to stop using the notecard which shows me as creator.

This would actually earn you a suspension. You have to "email it to him" so that the chain of possession and distribution of said RL info stays outside of SL.

Oh, thanks, I was wondering if that crossed the line.

You shouldn't get suspended for disclosing RL info to the RL owner of that info. If he was sending that info to other people, he should definately get suspended, but there shouldn't be any problem telling someone about thier own identity.

Course it would be a short step of the person ArchTx sent the information to to them AR ArchTX claiming Arch had been giving it out.

Since it would be in the interest of the offender for the whole thing to devolve into a "personal dispute"

Since LL doesn't get involved in those.

That's correct. It's only disclosure if you reveal an SL avitar's RL info or details to a third party, directly or indirectly. You WOULD get pinched if you passed it to a friend or alt to send to him because he has you muted though. It would be harassment if anything, but a single card would hardly qualify for that IMO. He'd never report it anyway, the guys running a scam and won't risk putting a spotlight on his activities. The WHY, or purpose of the notecard has already been AR'ed and is on record.

ArchTx, 96m global scan distance is a long way...
New script.. scan for AV's, if within X distance of vendor.. get ID, message AV.
Plop it into a microprim and slide it onto a nearby noreturn parcel underground *evil laugh* Can also move the prim back & forth between 2 return-enabled parcels to avoid return. Not that I've ever done that before *whistles at ceiling innocently*