Recently the FBI raided the apartment of two University of Michigan students who are suspected of (get this) “potentially fraudulent sales or purchases of virtual currency that people use to advance in the popular online role-playing game World of Warcraft.” That’s right, the FBI is hunting down gold farmers.
The two students, a sophomore and a junior who are roommates, claim that the FBI has the wrong people and that they don’t even play WoW. Apparently the FBI confiscated “laptop computers, hard drives, video game systems, credit cards, a cell phone, paperwork and other computer equipment” to look for evidence of any wrong doing. “Specifically, agents were looking for online transaction records associated with WoW, the Chinese gold-farming website gameusd.com, eBay, PayPal and the United Services Automobile Association.”
The sophomore stated, “They thought we were involved in some kind of fraud. I’m pretty sure they have the wrong people, but they took all my stuff.”
According to the FBI, they suspect that at least one of the students is involved with a “scheme to set up fraudulent bank accounts to buy and/or sell ‘virtual currency’ or ‘gold’ to be used in the game.”
Source: Computerworld