Know Your Scams: Deadspace/Faction Loot

Setup

The scammer advertises in Local:

Deadspace/DED/Faction loot for sale always piques interest from people. Green and Blue modules can be very expensive and very useful fit to ships. This is certainly goign to interest a lot of people.

Looking at the contract there certainly are a lot of Faction, Storyline and Deadspace modules listed and it could be interesting but lets check the price of the contract versus what they are asking for.

What Happens Now

First thing of interest is the price You Will Pay. It is 560 million ISK not 5.3 billion as the advertisement said. Let's use evepraisal.com to see how much the items are worth in Buy/Sell methods:

Ah, now it becomes clear.

The Sell value of the items is possibly 5.07 billion ISK and that is what the advert in local was saying. It's possible that it's right but the buy value is only 10.32 million ISK and, as any trader knows, the smaller the difference between Sell and Buy the more people who want it.

You could buy the contract and try to sell the items for 5 billion but you'd be waiting A LONG time, if it all sold at all. 

The scammer has just bought this stuff for around 10 million ISK and offering, what appears to be worth 5 billion, for 500 million he hopes to snare a mark who is not going to look closely at the offering.

How Can You Protect Yourself

Rule #1 in Jita is: anything in Local is a scam to take your ISK.

Is this a scam, it could be argued it isn't but its attempting to prey upon the unwaring so to me it is definitely a scam.

Block the advertiser and think no more of it.

Know Your Scams: Trade In Station

Setup

The scammer advertises in Local:

Checking the on the market you'll see the price the item is, usually, a couple of hundred million ISK more than what is being offered. In this case the Kronos is 1.27b ISK and the scammer is offering it for a flat 1 billion ISK

What Happens Now

The scammer states a trade in system because this is one way they can con a person by providing as little detail as possible, they can drag/drop a Kronos into the window and wait for the mark to enter the money then quickly swap it out for a Megathron (same hull, vastly cheaper ship at 177m).

By avoiding the use of the contract system the scammer can control the flow and easily show, with one hand, what is on offer then quickly substitute it with something else before accepting. Once complete there is no public trasnaction that shows the con, only the mark having less ISK and the scammer a larger wallet.

Confirming the Scam

There was a small, miniscule, possibility that this was a legitimate offer so I eve mailed the scammer and asked if they'd accept via contract and they said yes:

Except no contract was ever created and all of a sudden they "made a sale" and decreased the number available in their advertisement.

How Can You Protect Yourself

Rule #1 in Jita is: anything in Local is a scam to take your ISK.

If anyone offers you something but says they want to trade in station then this should instantly have alarms ringing in your head. Never, ever, do a trade within a station. Always insist on a contract where the details can be clearly set out showing what you will get in return for your money.

Block the scammer and move on.

Know Your Scams: Rare Ship for Sale

Setup 

The following appears in Local:

Two billion for a rare ship, let's have a look at that:

Certainly looks different, the Chinese/Japanese/Korean text indicates it may not be normal for this server so might be worth investing in. 

Let's check the contract:

2b ISK for this ship, seems like a bargain as other "rare" ships go sale for at least a hundred billion.

What Happens Now

The ship looks fabulous the foreign characters certainly give it the impression of rare and something not normal on the Tranquility server. Perhaps this is from the Chinese server and it'll be worth investing in.

The use of the images show a story, a story the scammer hopes will encourage a rich player to buy on a whim.

How Can You Protect Yourself

Rule #1 in Jita is: anything in Local is a scam to take your ISK.

If you look closer at the Ship Info it appears to be a normal T2 ship listed, I had a suspicion it was just a localized window for the Ishtar so I looked up the Ishtar and confirmed that the text and bonuses were the same.

Looking at the contract the ship in the contract is a T1 Vexor as opposed to whatever its name in the Show Info window is as well as there is no T2 marker over the ship image, that's a huge clue that this is a scam. 

Block the character and move on.

Know Your Scams: Gravimetric Sensor Cluster

Setup

The scammer advertises in local:

Oh wow, look at this a module that will protect you from "nasty gankers" who prowl New Eden looking for targets. If you have this in your cargohold, and you can use it more than once, and when the ganker tries to fire on you this will cause you to warp to a gravimetric site that only you can access.

Clicking on the contract, which is typically an auction, you will see this:

What Happens Now

The mark will see the contract and may, if they're concerned about gankers, bid upon the item and continue to until they win. 

How Can I Protect Myself

Firstly, remember Rule #1, anything posted in local in a trade hub is going to be a scam and you should not accept any contract without seriously checking on the contents and issuer.

You can confirm whether or not this magic item does what the issuer says if you look at the details for the item:

You can see, after a little patient checking that it makes no mention of the "wonders" that the contract issuer says it does about being able to escape gankers. It's not even a ship module, its used in the production of Caldari Ships.

Know Your Scams: High SP Character for Sale

Setup

The scammer advertises in Local:

Linked contract shows the following (implant and cost may vary depending on the SP the 'character' has):

What Happens Now

The scammer is hoping the mark does not know you can't trade characters via contracts and is trying a very poor scam.

The implant is worth between 9m and 20m ISK and they're advertising it as a character with 200m skillpoints so have a price of 200m ISK.

How Do You Protect Myself

Firstly, remember Rule #1, anything posted in local in a trade hub is going to be a scam and you should not accept any contract without seriously checking on the contents and issuer.

In this case it should be clear to all but the most remote hermit that:

• characters cannot be traded in-game via contracts.
• an implant is shown not the name of a character
• the value of the contract that the issuer wants is the same as the SP they say the character has

This is a very poor scam but one that can catch new players out. As always check, double check and then triple check the contract details and its clear no character is being sold and its a cheap implant.

Block the issuer.

Know Your Scams: Plex Wraps

Setup

The scammer advertises in Local:

This is a variation on the Plex Box or Lucky Dip box scam that have been seen before.

In this instance the scammer includes a link to an image that perportedly shows what is in each box:

What Happens Now

They want people to buy the contract so pricing at 60m is a boon when they are advertising that there are TWO PLEX in every box.

The scam will repeat with new boxes appearing when unsuspecting marks buy them.

How Can I Protect Myself

Firstly, remember Rule #1, anything posted in local in a trade hub is going to be a scam and you should not accept any contract without seriously checking on the contents and issuer.

With this scam the added image contains all the evidence that this is indeed a scam. Let's look closer:

The Local window is used to show the user is active and this isn't an old contract setup but its the hanger view that quickly gives this away.

The fact Item Hanger is selected and you can see both the wraps and the PLEX shows that the plex are NOT in the wraps. If the were the image would have shown each Wrap being selected in order to show the content.

The Wraps clearly contain junk and no PLEX whatsoever.

Block the issuer and think no more of it.

Fake Wallet API

There are numerous scams people use in EVE Online and one variant uses a fake website, setup to appear genuine and convince people that they really are giving out ISK for free.

 

There have been various sites setup to help with this as well as numerous people attempting to use the same site and fake wallet details. Some are successful but then there are those that just throw things together and hope for the best. My recent favourite was one that was a reasonably new character, a couple of months old, but was using wallet history that was older than the character. Oh how I laughed at that one.

 

Still, this hasn't been frowned upon by CCP. This type of scam has managed to stay under the radar and within the rules.... until now.

 

Overnight CCP Falcon has released a announcement that, in the interest of reducing support tickets/GM overload, says that scams that rely on fabricated wallet details are no longer allowed.

 

Awww yiss!

 

Another scam bites the dust.

Know Your Scams: Hanger Clearance

Setup

A message is posted in local stating the character is headed to null/clearing their hanger/disposing of loot from a corp theft. There will be a contract linked:

A contract will be setup that will contain various modules/implants that may be Faction/Deadspace or Officer class and there will be a cost to the contract, under You Will Pay, but the listed items will fool the mark into believing this is a cheap contract that will be very profitable to resell the contents.

What Happens Now

The mark will accept the contract but find out when they try to sell the individual items that they are either not as valuable as they expected and there is a very low sale volume.

How Can You Protect Yourself

Firstly, remember Rule #1, anything posted in local in a trade hub is going to be a scam and you should not accept any contract without seriously checking on the contents and issuer.

You can immediately check this contract by performing a price check of any items contained with the it using item prices from Jita (either via in-game market, EVEpraisal or EVE Central).

Know Your Scams: Mining Operation in WH/Low/High

Setup

The scammer advertises in Local that they are running a Wormhole mining operation, all are invited to come and partake in this fabulous bounty.

WH MINING OP. WE HAVE 2xSCANNER/RAT KILLER/GATE SCOUT AND 2x MINERS! LOOKING FOR MORE MINING SHIPS 5% TAX RATE! Everybody welcome with any kind of mining ship.

A fleet is setup with a few members who are providing support to get people into a WH.

What Happens Now

Anyone who signs up is invited to fleet and asked to move to the assembly system (if it's not where the advertisement is). Once there you warp to the WH and enter, instructed to warp to [person] who is in fleet and then you can start mining.

You didn't want those implants did you?

Only you enter warp and appear at a spot within the WH system with no asteroids to mine, instead you're greeted by several combat ships who immediately tackle and kill you upon exiting warp. Your pod may be ransomed but more likely you'll wake up in a new clone without any implants and without a ship.

Variations

Two other variations known substitute wormhole for either low sec or null sec, with guarantees for safety by including mention of "large defense fleet".

How You Can Protect Yourself

Don't join fleets where you don't know the people involved, especially into places where Player vs. Player combat can occur without penalty and is common.

In the case of WH fleet adverts scanners are mentioned but what happens if you disconnect or leave fleet before you are back in the, relative, safety of high sec? 

Simple. 

You'll lose you ship and pod because you cannot exit a WH without being able to scan the exit down.

Simplest way to avoid this scam is to not join the fleet and certainly not trust someone you do no know to protect you and your ship in space where combat is the norm.

Know Your Scams: Index

Overview

This is the Index page for the Know Your Scams series, as I add new scam posts I'll link them here to this index page so you only have to bookmark the one location.

You may know but there is almost certainly a player, new or old, who doesn't. This page is for those that don't know but want to know.

Posts

1. ISK Doubling/Tripling
2. The Missing Zero's
3. Buying PLEX
4. Blueprints
5. Rage Quitting
6. Margin Trading
7. Hanger Clearance
8. Contracts for Fitted Ships
9. Rare/Officer Item(s) for Sale
10. Mining Operation in WH/Low/Null
11. PLEX Wraps
12. High SP Character for Sale
13. Rare Ship
14. Trade In Station
15. Deadspace/DED/Faction Loot

Posts without links are scheduled for release in the near future.

Rules To Remember

The trap cannot be far away...

Rule #1: In Jita, anything that appears in Local is a scam

Rule #2: See Rule #1

Your experiences at other trade-hubs may vary but I find that these two Rules work extremely well in any system that has a Local channel.

Further Reading

I've found the following blogs/forum posts on scams in EVE Online and they may be worth your time reading them:

• 2011 Forum Post on the Scams in EVE Online
• Write up of one of the first EVE Online scams
• The scam that caused a change in the EVE Online Terms of Service
• List of common scams in EVE Online
• The Definitive Guide To Avoiding Scams In Eve Online

Feedback

If you have any feedback about a post (or posts) please leave it as a comment on the post, if I'm wrong or am out of date I will take the time to update my post. Your feedback is appreciated and valued.

If you have suggestions for new posts on scams in EVE Online please leave a comment on this post.