Land Fraud on Mainland

I have a friend who bought a piece of group-owned land on the mainland. I am sure this is on the mainland, NOT a private sim.

The tier warning came up and said it would increase her tier. She owned the land for a few hours. She did not set the land for sale, she did not deed it to a group. She sees the land purchase as a transaction.

Then we don't know what happened after a few hours. Somehow, the old land owner group now owns the land again and has set it for sale again. One of the members of the group refuse to speak to her about this, the other is off-line.

My ONLY guess is that there was a sim reboot and the land reverted to the previous ownership. If that is the case, the Lindens should fix it, I'd hope.

If not . . . how could she possibly be ripped off or scammed? I can't think of any way. I checked the land for hidden objects, like maybe she paid an object - tho how it would bring up the land tier screen, I don't know.

And if you don't want to say how it is possible - to prevent people from doing it - maybe just say, yes it is possible.

This is a veeerry dangerous question to be asking, because anyone that might answer it would be discussing an exploit.

Yes, I realize it's kind of like asking "how do you commit credit card fraud?" and whoever gives a detailed answer is kinda putting themselves out there.

I started out owning land on the mainland and I could not have built my business without it. It's now nearly impossible to buy land on the mainland. It's rentals only. It makes it much harder for a person starting a small business on SL.

And as a business owner on SL, I worry about such exploits. It discourages people from wanting to play when they lose so much money.

The legit residents need to know how protect themselves from such fraud. As far as I can tell, she did everything right.

If it was possible, I don't think anyone would really bother. LL will get involved on the mainland whether it's an accidental glitch or a scam; it would be far easier to do run a land scam on a private sim where they'd be free to get away with it.

If the sim crashed the land will just revert to the previous owner since the sim will roll back to the last working saved state (a few hours is a big rollback though).

Whatever the cause though, your friend should open up a ticket with the transaction number, the name of the group that owned/owns the land and the location of the parcel (sim name, and coordinates) and they look into it and she should just get the land back .

(Edited to add that if it sells in the meanwhile, she might get the purchase price returned instead)

You definately need to discuss this with someone at LL. "IF" the sim was restarted that could be an issue, regardless of if it was the group that sold your friend the land that requested the reset or not.

If your friend can prove the transaction took place, then LL should not hesitate to step in and address the problem, especially if the sim had been reset during the period of time between the transaction.

Rather then chastizing a resident for bringing to light a possible exploitable glitch in an exsisting system, perhaps LL would better serve its customers who had fallen victim to it by FIXING IT.

Thanks everyone

She did open up a ticket with the Lindens. It's relieving to know that they should take care of this.

I should also note, in order to protect myself from any TOS violation, that I DO NOT want detailed descriptions of possible exploits.

I have been buying Mainland for over a year and have never known or heard of an exploit that would do what you are describing. I have, however, had some billing glitches due to sim or server issues. Sounds like the rollback hypothesis is the most logical explanation. Please let us know how it resolves.

Proving the transaction itself should be easy. Its in the account history on the web page.

what is the name of the sim??

It's not possible, as far as I know, on the end user side.

Having traded land for many months, I'll say I've seen it happen more than once. It's usually when the game is borked and a particular SIM is REALLY borked.

Good Luck,

Skye

If the sim crashes during a lands changing of status, and if the sim failed to so a server save, ( or core dump ). Then its highly possible this occured. This occurance use to be common place a while back when Mainland was the name of the game.

What i wonder is filing tickets (OMG how many can the handle with all the current isues occuring?) and how long will it take to deal with?

I disagree, this same thing happened to a friend of mine. He had purchased 2 lots one next to another, and there was a sim crash shortly after the purchase, the owners were paid, and the land reverted back to the old owners after the crash. I summoned a linden, got lucky and got a techie linden, who examined the logs, and told us he saw some errors in the log, things were not formatted correctly. He told my friend to file a land issue report (which he did), and a couple of days later he was repaid the money he paid initially for the lots. Tell your friend to file the report and she'll get a refund in the amout she paid. This is most likely what happened, I doubt it was an exploit.

Hard to find land on the mainland? I see gobs and gobs of it.. there's 20k alone for sale in my sim at the moment.

This does happen, it's rare but it does happen. It's a bug and not fraud. In my land career and with thousands and thousands of parcels I've had it happen 5 or 6 times. You need to fill out a bug report and a help request and contact Guy Linden as soon as humanly possible. Write down the exact transaction numbers, money amounts, exact location, and who you bought it from in a notecard for future reference. A lot of time when they get to your bug report they have questions and so much time has passed its hard to hunt down in history. In all cases but 1, I have been refunded my purchase price by the Lindens although it does take some time (few weeks to a month). Your best bet is to get the original owner who it reverted back to, to look in there transaction history and see that they received the money and hopefully they do the right thing and refund you or give the parcel back. I can say from my experience, that every time I was on the seller end and the land reverted back to me, I still received the money and just had to give the land back to the purchaser.

P.S. I never got the land back, only money paid for the land.

It may be advisable to download and print off your transaction history if and when you make a significant purchase or sale within SL. That way you have a separate paper record of the deal.

In the event of any issues you do then have some tangible proof, which as a last resort you can fax/scan to Linden Labs. As a matter of interest (and in the UK) a fax copy of an original document can be sometimes the legal equal of the original. There was a court case over this point a few years ago

Of course that does not help the original person with the problem within this thread. But when you start spending lots of US dollars within SL it stops being a game and starts to enter real life, and then you take appropriate precautions. Boring I know.

Just a personal view

Note, on edit while typing the first post, Sarah also makes a fair point. Record keeping is the key, (and a robust back up imho)

Impossible? In Valeriya and nearbye Vorizonhirkutsk there is more land for sale than there is land with stuff on it.

I saw that comment and was going to say the same thing. There is tons of property available on the mainland.

Thanks everyone.

To anyone who asked for names, I'm not naming anything as that is a sure way to get this thread closed.

The last time I looked at land - which was a few weeks ago - it was nearly impossible to find land in the awful land search. Now they have an option for just mainland, which makes it a bit easier. Maybe with the new continent, people are now selling land. RL has been hectic for me lately so I'm always behind the times.

Just open up the map and click the button to show land for sale. You'll see that there is an abundance of land available. Finding the spot that's right for you will be the difficult part.

I've had a sim rolled back while I was asleep to a state just after I put the land up for sale, but before anybody had bought it.

A few plots got sold, then reverted back to me, which was simple to fix (I just gave it back to the people who bought it). One 4096sqm plot caused a bit of an issue however. Basically, it got sold, then rolled back, then somebody bought the 4096 next to it and put it back up for sale at a higher price. Somebody then came along and bought both of them with the intention of joining them together.

Giving the second buyer their money back wasn't enough, as they needed 8192sqm and they wouldn't have bought the adjacent one if this one hadn't been for sale, andhe sellers of the adjacent plot had already reinvested their money. Fortunately, the first buyer was very understanding, but I could have had a real issue if they hadn't been.

I had this problem with Sarah a few months back. I bought her parcel, then the sim was rolled back and a second person bought it again. Was quite worrisome to just have land disappear like that but she quickly refunded me which was nice.