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'The first step is to make things look fuzzy.

'Let's say, for instance, that I have stolen a Paypal account and let's say that this Paypal account has about 1,000 euros,' Richet says. The same principle applies online, but cybercriminals make use of 'exchangers' and 'obfuscators' to hide the trail their money leaves as they transfer it.

#WARSPEAR ONLINE INGAME CURRENCY FULL#

Short of a full blown investigation by the IRS, no one would realize that the car wash's revenue is being inflated by Walt's drug money. As he does legitimate business during the day, Walter's wife also rings in fake customers and 'pays' with her husband's drug money, turning it into taxable business revenue. With millions of dollars of drug money stored in his house, protagonist Walter White purchases a car wash that primarily deals in cash. The television show Breaking Bad provides an example of a classic money laundering scheme. On a fundamental level, digital money laundering works similarly to its analog counterpart. His findings indicated that hackers had, according to their own anonymous testimony, laundered money in this way, but Richet was unable to quantify the behaviour. The methodology in Richet's study relied on combing through popular hacker and 'blackhat' forums searching for certain key terms. The only problem is there's no real way of knowing how popular this method of laundering may be. But in the case of online games, there are no anti-money laundering policies or algorithms to detect or prevent strange behavior. There are some places where government officials, like Europol or Interpol, are more likely to be. 'But what I found interesting in highlighting this method of laundering it was more under the radar because nowadays everyone is talking about bitcoin laundering. 'It is not a common behavior,' Richet says. It's a practice developers such as Blizzard have worked to stamp out through rigorous monitoring of in-game transactions and new systems like WoW tokens (opens in new tab) that let players buy gold indirectly from Blizzard.īut as Richet's study suggests, mixed in with usual goldselling transactions is the potential for criminals to launder their money. Faced with the enormous grind of leveling characters or earning gold, players with little time but plenty of wealth will purchase gold from farmers, typically from China or South America, who have little of either but are more desperate for the latter. MMOs like World of Warcraft have historically struggled to contain the now widespread phenomenon of gold selling. Websites like this one facilitate the buying and selling of virtual currencies for real money.

In 2013, Richet made waves by publishing a study detailing innovative money laundering methods (opens in new tab) including those that rely on games like World of Warcraft (Blizzard declined to comment on this story). As a cybersecurity expert, Richet has worked as an advisor to Europol in addition to being a Research Fellow and Lecturer on cybersecurity strategies at France's ESSEC Business School. Jean-Loup RichetĮnter Jean-Loup Richet (opens in new tab), a Cybersecurity Officer with French telecommunications giant Orange S. In the case of online games, there are no anti-money laundering policies or algorithms to detect or prevent strange behavior. It sounded absurd at first, but I decided to find out: if this is happening, how would it happen, and is it really that far-fetched?

But others have taken the matter further, claiming that criminals ranging from one-man operations to Russian crime syndicates buy and sell ISK as a way of cleaning dirty money. A good majority of EVE's players are rightfully convinced (opens in new tab) that real-money trading-selling in-game currency (ISK) for real money-is a major problem. At first I thought these rumors were nothing more than tinfoil-hat conspiracy theories-a not uncommon thing in a virtual universe many believe is actively run by its own illuminati. During my time reporting and investigating the events of EVE Online, I've stumbled upon my fair share of stories regarding this subject.

Warspear online ingame currency