Website Scams EVE Player

A couple of months back a player asked for my advice. While he was in the Amarr trading hub he noticed a player advertising an external website that offers ships for purchase (for ISK of course). He asked if I knew anything about the website and I admitted that I had never heard of it, but to obviously be wary of anything posted in Local chat in the trade hubs. For those who have heard of the website (or saw the article’s title), you already know where this story is going.

Before you get excited about decent pricing and free delivery, you should probably read on.

The player linked the website to me and we both looked for information on it. The website is EVE-Bazaar.com. A quick Google search did not reveal any obvious scam reports, nor did my inquiry with a few other friends online (they had not heard of it either). The website offers ships ranging from Battleships to Titans, Jump Freighters to Orcas, and even offers PLEX. I looked over the sell prices of the ships and compared it to my market data (Note: Data was at the time of this conversation; data may have changed since then). I remarked to the player that although the sell prices on the website were currently below the average sell prices on the markets, they were still well above the break-even points if they were being constructed using purchased minerals. Ultimately, I told the player that it was an interesting concept for an EVE-related website, but it was odd that it was all that the website seemed to do. Although it’s a different way to move your industrial alliance’s constructed goods, the cost of maintaining a website and domain name would be better served just buying straight PLEX with the same money. That statement does not even include the amount of time it can take a semi-amateur to set up and maintain the HTML and JavaScript that the site runs on, and updating it every time your back stock changes.

I eventually shrugged my shoulders and told the player that I had no idea if it was safe or not, but asked him to contact me with the results if he tried it out. A few weeks ago, he did – and the news was not good.

He had invested around 150,000,000 ISK to try it out – not a bank breaking amount, but definitely enough to hurt for a player of his character age and skill. I interviewed him via TeamSpeak and he had the following to report:

“I received an email from them informing me that I had been scammed and I would never see the ISK again. Instead, they made me an offer: for every player I helped scam, they would give me 50% of whatever they ‘earned’ from the new victim.”

Never trust a website that will "let" you "buy" a Wyvern, but not a Revenant.

The writer of the email eluded that there were more than one person in on this website scam, as he told this player that if he recruited enough people, “they would invite him to join their Corporation” and teach him their dirtiest secrets. “They tried to tempt me, but I wasn't having any part of it. I hate scammers,” the player said. The identity of the corporation or its members was never disclosed, with the exception of the in-game ISK character named "EVE-BAZAAR DOTCOM" who is in an NPC corp.

I informed the player that this was an old tactic to scam the player further. Once they have a sizable amount from you, they convince you to act as bait in order to bring in more prey. This pyramid type scheme allows the scammers to sit back and let their victims do their fishing for them, all on the promise that they’ll see riches in the end. The scammers may even give their fishermen a little bit of ISK here and there at first to tempt them to continue to work at it, but in the end they leave their victims to starve while they count their piles of ISK.

So is this tactic legitimate in the eyes of CCP’s terms of service? While scamming is frowned upon, it is absolutely condoned within the contents of the game (in certain conditions). However, since this is an external website outside of CCP’s domain, do the administrators behind this scheme violate any TOS rules? The website does not have any advertisements, money donation tabs, or ability for RMT on the site. Technically the website, although external, is only scamming ISK using the promise of in-game items. This may fall into the definition of condoned scamming.

CCP seems to be considering it themselves. The player, also unsure if the website is operating within the TOS, took the time to report the details of the crime to EVE’s customer service and they responded that they would be “investigating the matter further”. The player requested that either his ISK, or the ship, be returned from the scammer and he would be satisfied. At the time of this article’s writing, no response has been made to the player from CCP.

I also took the time to email both contact emails on EVE Bazaar and included the following message:

The author's past experience in regulations and compliance made it incredibly difficult to keep this email less than 5 pages long.

At the time of this writing EVE Bazaar has not responded to the email. However, while researching this story I was able to find an old forum post I missed the first time around. The forum post is a typical scam report with a very interesting post by a notorious scammer near the end of it. Here’s an image of that particular post to close out this story with:

This image speaks volumes about who might just be behind the website.

For those interested in donating ISK to help the victim refund his loss, you can send it to Coffee Rocks and I will see that he receives it. At this time, I have promised not to make his character name public.