Back in this day (roughly september 2006), Corsi Mousehold teamed up with Fayte Baxter, a person otherwise unknown to the Nigras, to script an ingame object that can essentially generate fake linden dollars, and alot of them. These hacked monies, combined with credit cards stolen by the both of them, combined to roughly 20 Billion L$. As any Nigra knows, this kind of money doesn’t last in SL, as Lindens eventually find it, but Corsi and Fayte knew this, so what did they do? They sent this stolen L$, a large fraction of the 20 billion, to Nexxus Ambassador, knowing he would be fined heavily as LL demanded their typical 150% fine from him, which he couldn’t pay. Nexxus was forced to drop SL and Furnation, and Corsi was right under him to catch it.

Corsi and Fayte sent chunks of this hacked e-money to others, who were also fined out of their ass, such as Chmarr Walcott, but they’re not as relavent.

Typically both Corsi would be b& along with Fayte (who would move onto another account), but it would turn out that and Corsi was e-friends with some unknown linden on the g-team (the people who typically issue bans), so each was cut a break. Today Corsi himself is aiming for a spot among the lindens, and considers himself a shoe-in.

„
—A trusted Linden.,

Well if that’s true, then how could Anshe Chung make youtube take down that cnet video her with the pink penises?

got news for you mac. what a concierge account, or even $195/mo gets you is an rt (freeware ticketing system) automated ticketback. that’s it.

However staunch you may want to be about it, I was using that example because I knew for sure it happened, and what was said as to why it can’t be persued.

Whether you like it or not, the US does NOT HAVE defined laws on virtual property. Just because L has USD value, doesn’t make it non virtual. Do you actually have Lindens in your hand? Can you take them with you AWAY from the computer? Can you use them in trade with tangible usefulness? No.

They are a medium within a game that’s worth real money. It’s essentially the same as a game like Everquest II, where you can buy gold with REAL money and later sell that gold. It has REAL USD value, but the gold and plat in that game has no value outside of that particular game. I can’t take Lindens to Wal-Mart. This reason, probably alone, and if not alone about 90% of the decision to use Lindens. If we paid in USD, Euro, whatever, the values change to things that you CAN use outside of the game. Most often times, open games like this use a ‘made up’ currency to skirt all the legal issues that come with using a real currency.

You agree to allow LL full control over you essentially when you come and play thier game. Because of this, US courts believe that the ‘court and law’ is LL themselves. Now since LL is a business, if they decided just to start randomly stealing money from players, then the business could be taken to court, however transactions that do not include LL are subject to LL’s discretion if the money is ill gotten.

Additionally, you cannot file charges for virtual property against someone who exists only in a virtual world. What are you supposed to do? “I was playing this game, and this avatar named Seola Sassoon stole 4 million Lindens from me… go find her!”

As for your ‘public duty to report’, I’m not sure where you come from, but the US virtual laws are very, very vague and suspect and if the controlling medium handles it to thier credit, which is what you agree to, you don’t have much recourse. If you did, LL would have far been under by now by unhappy people who have lost thier shirts in SL. Not to mention the other platform holders, for taking duped money out of honest people’s pockets.

From the ToS:
1.4 Second Life “currency” is a limited license right available for purchase or free distribution at Linden Lab’s discretion, and is not redeemable for monetary value from Linden Lab.
Regardless of terminology used, Linden Dollars represent a limited license right governed solely under the terms of this Agreement, and are not redeemable for any sum of money or monetary value from Linden Lab at any time. You agree that Linden Lab has the absolute right to manage, regulate, control, modify and/or eliminate such Currency as it sees fit in its sole discretion, in any general or specific case, and that Linden Lab will have no liability to you based on its exercise of such right.

2.6 Linden Lab may suspend or terminate your account at any time, without refund or obligation to you.

3.3 Linden Lab retains ownership of the account and related data, regardless of intellectual property rights you may have in content you create or otherwise own.

5.3 All data on Linden Lab’s servers are subject to deletion, alteration or transfer.

Basically, LL owns you and your av and everything on it and can do whatever they want, and you agree to this when you agree to the ToS. There’s more that goes on that they don’t have to release names and yadda yadda yadda.

These types of ToS’s are what makes the virtual property laws tough to regulate, and enforce. You can’t escape them in any game you play that is based and registered in the US, and frankly in any other country as far as I know.

I think LL is going to be a sinking ship soon with mass anonymous registrations and the entering of corporate interests to replace the community interest that started Second Life in hte first place. It may be time to start looking for something else to play soon.

As things stand LL is using that clause to effectively ‘vanish’ anything questionable that happens. In fact it’s used more to shield them against criticism (WHY are LL so damn sensitive to criticism? it’s actually worrying, when you meet a person in RL who is that sensitive your usual conclusion is that they have huge inadequacy issues – how can an entire company suffer inadequacy issues?).

They also use it to attempt to conceal the fact that they administer a completely arbitrary form of ‘justice’ – one which lacks all pretensions of what normal democratic societies would recognise as justice (so much for all the hand-wringing touchy-feely left-wing liberal bullshit!).

Leaving that aside – we aren’t talking 400 ‘bucks’ (whatever the hell they are – presumably US$?) here. We are talking something starting around US$4000 – 10x the value of your example at least.

Firstly I think walking into a police station complaining about being screwed for US$3500-4000 and up might just provoke a little more interest than US$400 – or was it L$400?

Secondly, if you get a statement taken – then nothing heard – well chase the matter. If the cops don’t want to know, start drumming up publicity, contact your local political representative. Don’t give up.

Thirdly, if the matter is presented as corporate conspiracy to conceal a crime, well, you know I think THAT might raise a bit more interest. And that IS what’s happening here.

Finally don’t give me the ‘it happened on the Internet so it’s not real’ argument.
L$ have a value in real US$ – LL have established THAT quite firmly by allowing Supply Linden to sell L$ for US$.
Items with a real value, exchangeable for US$ on a LL run trading market…?
Sorry, someone scamming a million L$ (from LL by persons unknown, or from Nexxus Ambassador by LL, it makes no difference, it’s still theft)in SL is NO DIFFERENT to someone picking your pocket for US$4000.

A crime has been committed, there is a public duty to report a crime (interestingly something common to all law systems I’m aware of), failing to, or refusing to do so is an act of conspiracy, where more than one individual is concerned, and constitutes a further offence.
All it needs is someone with the determination to get the relevant law enforcement agency to get off their ass’s and accept that, while this MAY be an unusual case, it IS real and must be investigated.

(Quite frankly, I’m a bit worried as to how the donations got spread so quickly if the person accepting them wasn’t online…..)

If LL knows what’s going on, such as duped L’s, or theft from other accounts of L, then it’s not a valid crime to just anyone…. unfortunately. I suspect the only fraud worth getting any Linden’s to contact real authorities would have to be attacks on thier own money, or someone who has hacked passwords to drain a real credit card. If it deals only in L theft, I’m afraid it’s a dice roll.

One woman was reduced almost 400 bucks in Kansas by a malicious script and she tried to get info from LL, but nothing was done, so she went to the police station, who by law DID take a statement, but there’s nothing they can do.

As for dubious confidentiality… all businesses have them. Now, LL can’t give specifics, though they should have said ‘We found an av that duped L’s’ and that’s why it was deducted. My concern which is NOT made clear in this article, is that… the monies that were deducted, was it all from the large single donation, or did LL take considerably more than that.

Say I donated 1 million L’s to Furnation with duped L. In turn it gets spread around. LL has the right and should take back 1 million exactly (I mean, it sucks yes, but if you let people get away with giving other avs 1 million L, it opens it up for people to launder this money knowing the last av to get that money gets to keep it). Did LL take 1 million plus 500,000? Then I’d be GREATLY concerned.

Now, what HONESTLY concerns me, which is another large detail missing, is the timeline this all happened. Was it given and within a few hours taken away? A day? A month? All we have for donation date is ‘mid-december’ and then 27th is when things hit the fan. Mid December can be as late as the 25th techincally.

I wish Pix had at least gained some screenshots of these alleged deductions and the alleged large donation and quite possibly, who it was from. At least so there’s something to see to prove this story is true to a T. There are some shady details left out that could make this story much much more believeable, and truthful… but as we know SL, it could be blown way out of proportion as well.

Put very briefly. If LL even *suspected* fraud, WHY haven’t they informed the appropriate RL authorities? After all, ‘millions’ of L$ isn’t pocket change!
By doing so, refusing to discuss the matter under their legally dubious ‘confidentiality’ clause, and attempting to gloss a serious matter over they ARE almost certainly committing a conspiracy to conceal a crime and leaving themselves wide open to RL prosecution.
How do we know they haven’t fulfilled their legal obligations as US citizens running a US business? Simple, Nexxus Ambassador make no mention of being contacted by RL authorities, as he would have to have been if the matter had been reported…
At this point so are any other US citizens with knowledge of this alleged fraud.
I’m not a US citizen – but if any of you care to grow a pair, this might be the time to rein in LL’s completely unacceptable behaviour.

What we need to do is to offer Nexxus what support we can. I’ve known him for a very very long time, back to the days of Furnation IRC chat.

I know he’s innocent of any delibrate wrongdoing.

We need to support him with this, because it’s bull.

I, for one, am pretty sick and scared of this.

If anyone wants to do something, drop me a line. I can think of two things to do that might get the message across that we’re fed up with the policies… neither of which LL will likely like much, but eh, viva le revoulution..