Know Your Scams: Blueprint Scam

This is another old scam, I remember back in 2010 more of these than the ISK Doubling/Tripling Service ones. As with all contract scams take time to verify the details of the contract before thinking about clicking that Accept button.

It's a variation of the Ship scam where instead of a ship in the contract it is the BPC for the ship/item.

Setup

The scammer will setup a contract containing a basic variant blueprint copy of an faction and/or T2 item/ship that people want, a common example is instead of a Megathron Navy Issue BPC they will use a basic Megathron BPC.

The contract will contain the item, which at a glance loojs like a BPC of the item the mark wants and of course the price for this item will be around the price of the more expensive faction/t2 item/ship.

Example of the Blueprint Scam

They will then advertise the contract in local:

Advertisement in Local for the scam contract

What Happens Now

The mark comes along and sees the advertisement, they click on the link and see the item at a good price and although they look at the item they will get, they see it has the main part of the name and is a copy of the blueprint but not that it is not the item that is being advertised.

They click on the Accept or Place Bid button and, once they win any auction, receive the blueprint but on closer inspection notice it is not a blueprint they were led to believe it was.

How Can You Protect Yourself

As with other contract scams the ruse plays upon the mark not looking at the contract too closely, the use of a similar named, but much cheaper, item would allay some suspicion and the use of a price that is much lower than the actual value screams "awesome deal". The mark may well be inclined to accept the contract without spending the few extra seconds checking the details, after all if they can see the contract so can everyone else in the same system.

To prevent yourself succumbing to this type of scam, spend time verifying that the contract is for the right item, at the right price and that the Get and Pay sections are correct. 99.9% of the time these contracts are too good to be true and common sense dictates that if it is too good and you can't believe your eyes, it is too good and there must be a catch.