Scammer Exposed

Ok, so yesterday I was on Ark at Celeste Quarry and I was approached by an avatar claiming to be my soc leader, he said he had created an avatar for his sister..blah blah blah....anyone who reads this forumn knows what is coming next.

I strung the Avatar along to see where the conversation would lead. I have screen printed the conversation and once I have blanked out the names of the offending avatar (I still disagree with the forumn rule on this when I have evidence in the form of a screen print of the conversation) I will post the conversation here.

Anyway half of our soc are actually RL friends and I knew them (including our soc leader) before I ever played EU. So anyway I phoned my soc leader to let him know what was going on and he advised that I string the avatar along to see what the outcome would be.

Eventually I informed the avatar that they had made a mistake (in fact they had made a few) our soc leader is also an author and his conversations are always eloquent. the offending avatar was speaking in broken English with what I have come to understand as an Eastern European lilt to their speech, so I knew straight off they were not genuine. On top of this I am sure someone else posted a similar experience here on PCF a few weeks ago.

Anyway just to remind you all to be aware of this "society scam", I am sure that most of you are too intelligent to fall for it but it is always good to make the community aware.

As always due to forumn rules I can't post the avatar name here but I am happy to share with anyone who wants to know, just send me a PM.

Support case being sent to MA later today although the avatar had no skills and was wearing starter clothing so they will probably scrap the avatar now it is exposed and just start a new one.

Something similar happened to my husband a few weeks ago, don't remember exactly what they were doing but was claiming to be Roni's sister! He does not have a sister.

What's the scam?

gwit said:

What's the scam?

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He says he is the sister, and wants to lend 600peds (or something like that) and then disappears.

But the avatar shows the soc it belongs to - not the best scam

gwit said:

But the avatar shows the soc it belongs to - not the best scam

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It is NEW avatar, and applies to soc he wants to scam so still pretty good scam (until he tries to get out the peds, and gets caught)

I contacted support sometimes now to expose scammers.
I was told that people aren't so naive to fall for such stuff.

But there's always someone falling in each sort of thing.

What I say for such kinds of things is just watch out, if someone claims to be someone who you dont think they are, check directly with that person.
Also never trade anything to people you cant trust or if you dont feel safe, without colateral (ofc will be always a risk without colateral)

moondog said:

(...) I was approached by an avatar claiming to be my soc leader, he said he had created an avatar for his sister (...)

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I read a similar story two weeks or so ago. Enabling google-fu...

here it is:

microdot said:

In the early hours of the morning i was getting my shit together at Billys when i received a PM from an ava called <removed>. He said that he was my soc leader and that he had just created an ava for his sister and was helping her get it started (thinking back i should have asked why the fuck he would make a male ava for his sister )

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Please pm me the name.


edit:
I've had a similar case. This guy applied for my soc, when I asked him how he found out about us his reply was "I trade with many people in your soc", he failed to name them. He continued his story which was very fishy and as he kept taling he got all my alarmbells ringing.

Can I have the name please? thx

I had the same thing happen... There was a new player that messaged an officer in my Soc saying they were me on a "sisters" account, and needed some peds to set her up. This was maybe 3 weeks ago?

My soc has an active Teamspeak3 server, so that scam was quickly busted, screenshots taken, and support case made. MA had said they took care of it, it only took about an hour to get back to me, so I thought it was taken care of. It would seem this is the same person at it again.

Please PM me the name, and we can trade info... I am very curious if MA "took care of it"

Thanks

I think about two weeks ago, my soc leader was approached by my 'sister' as well.
Luckily he quickly found out it was a scam and reported it to MA.

Seems to be a common occurance these days, which probably means it worked a couple of times

Just like phishing emails it only has to work once or twice for it to pay off.

I hope MA eventually manage to handle this one.
Sick of these once.

With all of the recent issues they need to definitely look into this and put an end to it. I think they may need to goto a deposit first system that would possible slow the influx of people making avatars just to try and scam people. The system we have now is ideal where you can play the game without depo. If the initial depo was even a small sum atleast it may deter some people just looking to scam. Maybe the initial depo would buy you the gold card which is needed to be truly secure and the new player could have a trial period and could return the gold if the game didn't tickle his or her fancy.

Right, this happened to me when I was on my previous soc. Bad English and asked for money. I put him into suspected status. He asked 500 or so and I gave him 100 or 200 to test him as he said he would return after x days. And ofc he scammed me.

He got instant kick from soc and I'm sure he made several alts. He was in soc for long time. Many months to "study" what we say. He knew I loaned my soc mates peds so he did the same. Its my first time i get scammed after 8 years, but I kinda had an inner feeling about it and thats why i gave little to test since he was with us for so long.

Funny is after weeks a friend asks me if it was true that my brother asked for peds from my friend and I would give him back when I come online. He knew I had a brother from the chats he been reading in soc chat. So he used it against some of my friends asking now for like 5k peds lol. Ofc the friend was like "hmmm?"
He contacted me and good thing we found out about him.

I'm almost sure he is the same person been on going for like 1-2 years now. I wonder how many he scammed...

We have also experienced this. 3 times now, posing as me in my Girlfriend's "New" avatar.
Asking for 300-600 ped as a "loan" until I got off work.

Needless to say all my "Zoners" know I never loan gear or ped and never ask for the same so no one has been scammed...yet.

TheRock said:

I'm almost sure he is the same person been on going for like 1-2 years now. I wonder how many he scammed...

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Damn. That is kinda messed up.

ok Support Case sent to MA and response recieved, as follows : -

Me,

Yesterday I was at Celeste Quarry and I recieved a personal message from an Avatar claiming to be the leader of my society. The avatar claimed to have created the account on behalf of his sister. The avatar asked me if i would give them 500 ped. I phoned my society leader in Real Life who confirmed it was not him. I refused to give the avatar any money and I wish to raise a support case for harrassment. The avatar name was xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx - I have screen prints of the conversation.

Support Response :

Hi Moondog,

At this time we do not need the screenshots at this time, we are aware of this person and he will be dealt with.

Thank you for reporting, it was the correct thing to do, you also choose a smart way to proceed and avoided getting scammed, well done.

Kind regards,
Ulf | Entropia Universe Support

(Answered in 1.5 hours by ULF - good reponse time )

oh wow I was Approached the SAME WAY!!!

they said they would Log back on To pay me back.....
I was like RED FLAGSSSS

I said are you For real your asking me to pay for you to play LMAO

i told them to F#c& off

Hopefully more than just a slap on the wrist and an EU ban if it's the same person / group doing it.

Obtaining a money transfer by deception.

Can I get the scammer's name please?

same thing happened to me 2 days ago, a soc mate was aproached by this ark avatar who claimed i help her sister out ingame and ask my socmate for a 500 ped loan until i get online....

i pm´d the avatar in question handing out a single and only warning, havent heard anything since.

Two of my soc mates were also approached by someone acting as Serica typing in chat, looking for a loan for her sister that just started playing, and that she'd pay it back in 3-4 hours when she gets her GC. Their English was awful. Just a heads up everyone, be careful, don't give this scammer a reason to keep going.