L$ for sale on ebay???

Ummm...just came across an ad in-world proclaiming "10,000L$ for only 30$".


Clicking the link on the ad took me to an ebay page selling L$.

I thought this was against the ToS. Am I wrong? I know there are some other avenues to purchase L$ instead of the Lindex, but I thought ebay was one that was prohibited.

Submitted a Support Ticket anyway, but figured I may get a faster answer from my fellow Residents. Esspecially on the weekend *Grins*

~Jessy

It's not forbidden to sell or buy L$ on ebay. LL cracked down on a lot of ebayers though, supposedly for laundering L$ obtained by credit card fraud.

I don't think it's forbidden as such, but it is considered a high risk by Linden Labs and they can ban/fine people for using it.

*shrugs* I usually just tell people to buy off of SLExchange if they can't use the Lindex.

I bought L's once on ebay when the lindex was borked. The saving was negligable, but had no difficulty. I'd be careful though, they are cracking down. Go to obe of the "Unoficcialy" endorsed off world sites.

A year ago that wouldn't even have been a terribly good deal, I miss that exchange rate .

If LL suspects a resident is in possession of Lindens obtained via credit card fraud, they will take back up to 150% of the value, potentially leaving the resident with a negative L$ balance. Meanwhile, the Ebay seller will still have 100% of the resident's RL money, and since Paypal will not process claims for goods delivered electronically, there's virtually no chance of getting the RL money back. LL wins, credit card scamming Ebay seller wins, you lose.

I'm not going to buy from there myself. I find Lindex works well for the small amounts I ever need.

However, I am concerned of new Residents buying L$ that LL may "recover" due to improper sales. There was a big thread on this a bit ago, though that issue had a lot of other factors as well.

If it's allowed, then no problem. If it's questionable, then I worry for someone just new to SL getting in a tangled web that could cost them more than they could afford.

Quite frankly, I feel LL should be the sole market for L$. No offense to those others that are allowed through LL, but how is someone to know who is authorised and who isn't?

Ah well. *shrugs*

~Jessy

L$ may be freely traded on any venue.

If someone makes a lot of L$ in-game and sells them on eBay, the buyers are safe.

However, be aware that LL tracks L$ that are obtained fraudulently. If someone steals a credit card, buys L$ with it, and then sells it on eBay, not only are they punished, but anyone who bought the L$ may be fined 150% of the L$, if LL believes they may have been complicit in the theft.

As a buyer, you have little to go on in determining whether a seller is legit or not; people may leave positive feedback before LL takes action and debits their SL account.

Currency traders may use LL's Risk API to secure themselves against such fines. Presumably big players such as SLEX or Anshe Chung take advantage of this.

I can currently sell 10,000L on the Lindex and SLEx for around 36usd, why would anyone sell them on e-bay for less?

You know the old saw of, "If it too good to be true...," well, that's pretty much the thought process on it. Chances are those cheap L were stolen either via some means in game, a hacked account, or via credit fraud.

If they obtained the L$ through fraud or a scam, they probably don't care too much about getting the best exchange rate.

There are two reasons I can think of why someone would sell L$ for below market value:

1) They are quitting SL or need RL money ASAP to pay bills.

2) The L$ were bought with a stolen credit card and they need to unload them on an unsuspecting buyer before LL is alerted to the fraud.

I suspect there's a lot more of (2) happening on Ebay than (1) at any given time.

It's not 30USD

did you click on it? i did

its 30Euro's or something, but not USD

also the sellers of lindens can be burned too
I used to resell lindens to those who could not buy them due to being over their limit. I would just buy from lindex and sell to them, was not making money at doing it, just did it to be helpful

well the buyers of those lindens (a few) burned me by claimed credit card fraud on paypal. I lose the US $ and the linden $, and I highly doubt anything happened to those buyers

In the near past those who purchased Ls from Ebay, in cases where the money was ill-gotten by the seller, lost the Ls and had to pay a penalty. If that isn't true someone enlighten me.

There's no way to know how the seller came by the Ls, and Ebay is a den of scoundrels anyway.

Posion!!! Dont buy them from ebay

Wonderful... LL recently docked me 130k for buying lindens they said were obtained for sale fraudulently on ebay (I used my paypal acct to buy them), I was just getting ready to try to recover the money from Paypal... that's like what $500 US? Man this just isn't right. The Lindens are not handling this right. It should be up to the CC company that was allegedly defrauded to come after me, not the Linden people, they didn't lose squat. :igh::

If you used a credit card with Paypal, you still have some recourse with your credit card company after Paypal rejects the claim. You have to go through the process with Paypal first, though. The Ebay forums are filled with stories of Paypal accounts being suspended when people have filed credit card chargebacks for goods not received.

that sucks and yes SL will do that
I would still be offering to sell them to ppl that needed them (as in buy then resell to them) but I got burned too much and am very scared to try again

now if someone came to me and said a mutual friend sent them, that adds a level of trust for me

*shrug*

When someone buys $500 US worth of L$ on the LindeX with a stolen credit card, the money gets split among one or more residents who's L$ you bought. A few days later, the owner of the credit card issues a charge-back causing LL to loose the $500 US along with a charge-back fine.

Since they don't just reverse the LindeX sell orders, LL still owes the sellers the $500 so it's definitely losing money due to fraud.

Then LL should go after the thief who amde the original purchase through RL legal means, not by taking L$ (or USD) from from someone in SL other than that person.

There's always an electronic trail back. LL is taking the lazy way out and docking the first step, not following the trail to the source.

In any event, I'll always advise anyone to not buy from any source other than the Lindex.

~Jessy

The problem with this is there is no easy way to recover from the "thief." He stole the credit card info in the first place, so LL can't get recompense from the credit card. And he sold the L$ to third parties, so LL can't reclaim the L$ from him. If LL is able to track down the ultimate account of the thief, well and good; this takes a long time and probably costs more than can be typically recovered.

Further, often the third parties who buy the L$ from the "thief" are also the thief or his confederates, helping to launder the L$.

LL will not necessarily take 150% of the L$ purchased form a buyer. If they believe the buyer was duped, they'll only take the L$ actually purchased.

LL's justification in doing this is that they have informed us all they may do so; we know in advance to only purchase L$ from dealers using the Risk API.

The problem is that they only did a one time announcement, back in January (http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/01/17/if-it-sounds-too-good-to-be-true%E2%80%A6/).

I really doubt all that many people are aware, and usually "you don't have to use the LindeX, use SLex" doesn't come with a warning of the risk of going elsewhere, and people just think that buying their L$ elsewhere is perfectly fine.

Surely if you buy from the slexchange.com your money is given to you by "Exchange Street" or whatever their inworld presence is called and any chargeback would need to be carried by slexchange.com? Please comment if that is not true!

There's nothing wrong with SLex.

All I meant was that it would probably help already if "you don't have to use the LindeX" was accompanied by a warning that not all third-party sources of L$ are safe and point out what could happen if they're not careful.