Friday, June 12, 2009

Eve Bank Scam - Riddic Replies

The guy who got perma-banned for Real Money Trading with ISK he stole from Eve Bank has replied on the official forums through a friend.

Of interest to me:
There is no justification or excuse that would make up for what I done. I had an incredibly hard decision to make, the choice between family and video game. The outcome would have been far worse had I chosen Eve. This still doesn't justify it. I have every belief that the current staff will be able to pull things up and ensure no losses, and it might actually encourage some of them to pull their fingers out. A lot have been hiding under the EBANK wing with almost zero participation. Those who EBANK customers should really be thanking are SentryRaven (forum and teller duties, Mr Horizontal and Hexxx (coding extroadinaires), and quite possibly the biggest asset EBANK has ever had (on an ingame/board level) Athre (teller and general duties).

I see a lot of praise shooting out for people like LaVista and it makes my blood boil (always had). When EBANK started, he spent about two days coding a crappy website, which ended up being ripped up and replaced with the Hexxx and Horizontal sites. For this two days work he was paid a sum of close to 8 billion isk. I, as CEO of EBANK, doing all daily tasks, writing the whole T&C, answering thousands of evemails, actioning thousands of withdrawals, wasn't paid that for my entire tenure or two years in EBANK.

Since then, LV has done absolutely nothing. He was actually supposed to be an auditor and monitor teller funds, suspicious withdrawals etc. He should have been the one who saw the money moving from EBANK Ricdic and immediately raised flags but his duty was never done. He has since provided the excuse that he resigned as auditor at some point or other, leaving him with no roles again. LV has only been around as someone to pay the server costs and deal with hosting issues that occur once every 8 months.

Anyway, that's not what this is about. With the exception of LV and those who were AFK or almost not present in EBANK as staff (Selene D'Celeste, TornSoul and a couple of others) EBANK is made up of a fantastic set of people. These people have put varying levels of TLC into EBANK, from internal forum whorage, to salary and PR managers, to ingame dealers or those running our subsidiaries, you would be hard pressed to find a better group of people.

One of the issues in EBANK is getting things done. Hexxx (prior to my scam) had been MIA for about a month, Mr Horizontal has been MIA now for 1.5 months, Banni Vinda has retired but was also AFK, and Selene was doing an audit that was never going to be finished (as he never had time to post on forums much less do actual work for EBANK), LV was always around but done nothing anyway.
Now, I have no way of verifying any claims of a ex-Eve Bank CEO and ex-Eve player but accusations like this confirm my bias against large in-game financial organizations / schemes. As long as they are run by volunteers with no threat of real retribution for wrong-doing, they are shakier than a house of cards in my opinion.

5 comments:

  1. I LOLd when I read : "[I] wasn't paid that for my entire tenure or two years in EBANK..."

    I mean, apart from the tens of billions stolen this week.

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  2. Meh. Even a CCP bank wouldn't be scam proof. How would they possibly secure a loan except by requiring assets of equivalent value, and how do you "value" an asset? A prime example are BPOs, but BPOs tend to vary in price depending on what CCP is "balancing", and if you have a BPO, why not manufacture off of it for the money instead of taking a loan. Immediate needs generally indicate either that the ability to repay the loan may never exist (alliance at war and needs more caps...), or that they aren't terribly well organized (and hence you might not get your money back since they could just breakup).

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  3. What I mean when I think of bank is some form of preventing actual theft by a bank teller/manager. Provide the mechanics for people to run banks without giving them free access to the ISK, i.e. force the bank managers to offer collateral for the isk in the bank that they want to invest. And have some sort of insurance from the governments that protects a minimum amount of a depositor's ISK like a normal RL government does.

    I dunno. Personally I feel the totally volunteer method is doomed to failure from burnout or greed.

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  4. Anonymous7:52 pm

    With respect, I think current events in EBANK are proving you wrong. After all, losing a founder is a pretty major hit. And EBANK appeared to have weathered the run quite well.

    And besides, like current events the last twelve months have proved, it's not like real-world consequences and responsibilities stop banks failing.

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  5. Fair enough Stnylan. It is true a lot of people have faith in Eve bank and they prevented the CEO from taking more than 5% assets, all testaments to its solidity.

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