‘Voleur’ means “thief”, Part 1

by Alphaville Herald on 19/11/03 at 11:10 pm

I had originally intended to write a single comprehensive article on Alphaville’s most infamous scammer, but I decided that given time constraints and the blog format it might be better for the staff of the Herald to write this story piecemeal. For those of you who don’t know, there is an individual or group of individuals who maintain a number of sims in Alphaville, including Voleur, Granny, Fruitcake Lady, and Evangeline. This person or persons has become infamous for allegedly setting up a welcome house, offering assistance to newbies, and then scamming newbies out of their simoleans. Voleur (French for thief, by the way) has faded from the scene, but another avatar named Evangeline, bearing a striking resemblance to Voleur has taken her place. There are currently 60+ enemy links to Evangeline, so presumably lots of stories to tell. Rather than rely upon hearsay for this story, however, The Alphaville Herald went undercover to see for ourselves just how the scam works. I hired a genuine TSO newbie — Sheryl Hanson — , gave her 30,000 simoleans as bait, and told her to go Evangeline’s place and “seek help”. –Uri

Following is Sheryl’s report:

I went to see if it was true in that Evangeline was actually scamming people for money. I had in my possession a little over 32000 simoleons, supplied by The Herald, and went to go visit her Evangeline’s property, which was #1 in the Welcome category. When I got there, there was a lot of badmouthing going on so I thought that maybe I was in the wrong place. At some point Evangeline invited me into her house and then for some reason started slapping me.

Well, I attempted to ask her what help she could offer or what financial assistance she could provide. She didn’t answer me, per se, but while I kept bugging her, her roommate, a female avatar named Cari, told me that she would help me out.

Cari told me to open a trade window with her and instructed me to put 99,999 into the money slot so that she could “see that I didn’t have too much money” and would then “double the amount of money” that I had. The idea is that after you type in 99,999, if you have less than that your amount will go down to the level that you actually have. I had been instructed that this was what she would do, but Uri had also instructed me to go ahead and let her play out the scam. I went ahead and did what Cari told me. She then saw how much money I had – about 32,000 simoleans. Then she told me to check the approve trade box, but she did not put anything in… I then knew where this was going. She clicked her checkmark and completed the transaction with no money coming to me. When I asked why she did this she simply ignored me.

To make sure that this act was sanctioned by Evangeline I went to talk to her. She told me to “go jump in a pool and drown to receive one million simoleons.” I guess this was her way of saying “go jump in the lake.”

– Sheryl Hanson (Sheryl@alphavilleherald.com)

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