IIIlusionist [253384] —
Original article
Last month a gang of 77 players were placed in federal jail, a place from which there is no return (ba dum tss!), after being accused by the authorities of Real Money Trading. This mass jailing was brought to the public's attention by Pascal who took to the forums in a bid to find out further information.
Citizen-led investigations revealed that many of the culprits hailed from several notable factions and businesses, with members of REDACTED, REDACTED and REDACTED joined by employees from REDACTED, REDACTED and REDACTED being involved in this scandalous criminal enterprise.
As you can see, the Torn City Times is unable to publish the names of the factions involved due to the ongoing nature of the case.
The scourge of Real Money Trading is something which threatens the stability and integrity of the Torn City economy. RMT is when players sell Torn City Dollars for external currencies such as dollars, pounds or in this case Malaysian Ringgits. RMT is wide-spread in many online games, and can severely reduce donation levels, not to mention its effects on the value of players' assets and their progress. Basically, RMT is bad news.
Last month's crackdown was spearheaded by a single officer who deals with all RMT related issues, and whose recent appointment already seems to have paid dividends. The name of this officer has not been released - most probably to protect them from repercussions - but it would be apt if this person were congratulated by Torn's citizens, given that they are often quick to pounce when staff do something wrong. In lieu of this brave officer's name, Chedburn gave Torn City Times the go ahead to request some other information regarding the recent mass jailing, and in doing so we have learnt the exact scale of this operation.
A total of 77 accounts were placed in federal jail during the jailing spree - scarily that is not the highest number of mass jailings Torn has ever seen. Of the 77 accounts imprisoned, 21 were buyers, and 56 were the sellers - the latter mostly made up of multies.
Through careful investigation, I have managed to accumulate a list of many of the 77 suspected in this scheme. However, as the appeals process is likely underway and some of these people may be released in future, I felt it appropriate to avoid mentioning specific names in this article. Although, since a large number of the accounts fedded belong to the same companies and factions, they are not overly difficult to find.
Of the 77 accounts, all had a Malaysian IP. I am no computer genius, but I am sure it isn't hard to change your IP to change your location. So they may well not all be Malaysian, but they very well could be.
In all, $209,794,883,287 of Torn currency was found to have been illegally sold and was thus stripped from the holders' accounts. To put that into perspective, if a single player had bought all of this money it would make them the 28th richest player in Torn without lifting a finger. This fact in itself shows just how dangerous RMT can be.
The money seized is stripped, meaning that it is completely removed from the game. So for anyone looking for a quick payday, no, there will not be an extra $200billion in the next giveaway.
The whole investigation took three weeks for the officer to locate, investigate and deliver justice, and the individual responsible must be commended for their efforts. But this situation raises a number of questions. First, should the authorities provide the community with a list of names in cases such as this one, followed by a list of exonerations if the suspects are proven innocent? Secondly, should a list of all those put in federal jail be open to the public with short descriptions of why they are there?
But the question on everyone's lips is this; how did they get caught?
Firstly, we need to understand that these people were no amateurs; they were hardened criminals who were intellectually superior to most players and staff members. This high level of sophistication was clear to everyone when it was revealed that the RMT ring had decided to come together in one convenient faction to conduct their illegal business. A truly genius move.
After getting off to a promising start by gathering rule breakers under one roof, they then needed to find customers for their illicit RMT scheme. But how do you do such a thing when your product is illegal? Once again they tapped into that all-important intellect to answer the question, coming up with the fool-proof plan of openly advertising that they were selling Torn cash for real money on their faction description.
I know what you are thinking, that doesn't sound like the action of someone with functioning brain cells. What I didn't mention was that they wrote it in Malaysian.
"Kami jual duit torn. Sila PM ahli jika mahu"
Which a highly sophisticated translation tool translated to:
'We sell torn money. Please PM a member if you want'
It is hard to believe, but this is indeed how they were identified as a potential RMT ring. The leader of the faction was investigated, and logs between him and another account were found, in which clear RMT discussions (translated from Malaysian) were taking place, and bank details were seen to have been exchanged.
The enquiry now turned its focus to the buyer. After doing some sniffing around it was found that the suspected recipient was also buying Torn money from other sellers, and this led to several other sellers being identified. This, in turn, helped the authorities uncover even more sellers and buyers and so on and so forth, which just goes to show how much you put yourself at risk if you engage in just a single RMT transaction.
The heroic officer responsible for all of this put it best when they said: "all it took was one careless seller who exposed the entire ring."
Let this story prove a warning to those who would consider purchasing Torn Dollars with real money. Because you may think you are smart enough to beat the system, and you may well be, but everyone else involved may not be!
Unfortunately, certain information pertaining to this case must remain classified (faction ID, main buyer, individual player ID's), but rest assured the "masterminds" behind this operation have felt the full wrath of Torn staff. And anyone who has ever bought or sold RMT in the past would do well to get their affairs in order.
Because your time is almost up.
Citizen-led investigations revealed that many of the culprits hailed from several notable factions and businesses, with members of REDACTED, REDACTED and REDACTED joined by employees from REDACTED, REDACTED and REDACTED being involved in this scandalous criminal enterprise.
As you can see, the Torn City Times is unable to publish the names of the factions involved due to the ongoing nature of the case.
The scourge of Real Money Trading is something which threatens the stability and integrity of the Torn City economy. RMT is when players sell Torn City Dollars for external currencies such as dollars, pounds or in this case Malaysian Ringgits. RMT is wide-spread in many online games, and can severely reduce donation levels, not to mention its effects on the value of players' assets and their progress. Basically, RMT is bad news.
Last month's crackdown was spearheaded by a single officer who deals with all RMT related issues, and whose recent appointment already seems to have paid dividends. The name of this officer has not been released - most probably to protect them from repercussions - but it would be apt if this person were congratulated by Torn's citizens, given that they are often quick to pounce when staff do something wrong. In lieu of this brave officer's name, Chedburn gave Torn City Times the go ahead to request some other information regarding the recent mass jailing, and in doing so we have learnt the exact scale of this operation.
A total of 77 accounts were placed in federal jail during the jailing spree - scarily that is not the highest number of mass jailings Torn has ever seen. Of the 77 accounts imprisoned, 21 were buyers, and 56 were the sellers - the latter mostly made up of multies.
Through careful investigation, I have managed to accumulate a list of many of the 77 suspected in this scheme. However, as the appeals process is likely underway and some of these people may be released in future, I felt it appropriate to avoid mentioning specific names in this article. Although, since a large number of the accounts fedded belong to the same companies and factions, they are not overly difficult to find.
Of the 77 accounts, all had a Malaysian IP. I am no computer genius, but I am sure it isn't hard to change your IP to change your location. So they may well not all be Malaysian, but they very well could be.
In all, $209,794,883,287 of Torn currency was found to have been illegally sold and was thus stripped from the holders' accounts. To put that into perspective, if a single player had bought all of this money it would make them the 28th richest player in Torn without lifting a finger. This fact in itself shows just how dangerous RMT can be.
The money seized is stripped, meaning that it is completely removed from the game. So for anyone looking for a quick payday, no, there will not be an extra $200billion in the next giveaway.
The whole investigation took three weeks for the officer to locate, investigate and deliver justice, and the individual responsible must be commended for their efforts. But this situation raises a number of questions. First, should the authorities provide the community with a list of names in cases such as this one, followed by a list of exonerations if the suspects are proven innocent? Secondly, should a list of all those put in federal jail be open to the public with short descriptions of why they are there?
But the question on everyone's lips is this; how did they get caught?
Firstly, we need to understand that these people were no amateurs; they were hardened criminals who were intellectually superior to most players and staff members. This high level of sophistication was clear to everyone when it was revealed that the RMT ring had decided to come together in one convenient faction to conduct their illegal business. A truly genius move.
After getting off to a promising start by gathering rule breakers under one roof, they then needed to find customers for their illicit RMT scheme. But how do you do such a thing when your product is illegal? Once again they tapped into that all-important intellect to answer the question, coming up with the fool-proof plan of openly advertising that they were selling Torn cash for real money on their faction description.
I know what you are thinking, that doesn't sound like the action of someone with functioning brain cells. What I didn't mention was that they wrote it in Malaysian.
"Kami jual duit torn. Sila PM ahli jika mahu"
Which a highly sophisticated translation tool translated to:
'We sell torn money. Please PM a member if you want'
It is hard to believe, but this is indeed how they were identified as a potential RMT ring. The leader of the faction was investigated, and logs between him and another account were found, in which clear RMT discussions (translated from Malaysian) were taking place, and bank details were seen to have been exchanged.
The enquiry now turned its focus to the buyer. After doing some sniffing around it was found that the suspected recipient was also buying Torn money from other sellers, and this led to several other sellers being identified. This, in turn, helped the authorities uncover even more sellers and buyers and so on and so forth, which just goes to show how much you put yourself at risk if you engage in just a single RMT transaction.
The heroic officer responsible for all of this put it best when they said: "all it took was one careless seller who exposed the entire ring."
Let this story prove a warning to those who would consider purchasing Torn Dollars with real money. Because you may think you are smart enough to beat the system, and you may well be, but everyone else involved may not be!
Unfortunately, certain information pertaining to this case must remain classified (faction ID, main buyer, individual player ID's), but rest assured the "masterminds" behind this operation have felt the full wrath of Torn staff. And anyone who has ever bought or sold RMT in the past would do well to get their affairs in order.
Because your time is almost up.
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