Scams in EVE Online
Scams come in all shapes, sizes, and flavors. This article will give you an overview of the most common types but is in no way a comprehensive guide to every scam you may see in EVE.
To understand a scam you have to understand the target. Scammers aim for those who are greedy, hasty, and/or ignorant. 90% of scams can be avoided by double checking a contract inventory, or carefully thinking a situation through.
Remember: if something seems too good to be true, it probably is! Turn anything suspicious down, and don't be afraid to ask for advice or information (Do Rifter Fleet Issues really exist? (No.)) from people you trust.
Forbidden/Bannable Schemes
Although CCP regards most scams as simply part of the game, there are some tricks which they explicitly forbid:
Character sale fraud
If fraud is committed in the sale of a character through the character bazaar you can petition and have everything reversed.
Impersonation
Impersonating another character or corporation is a bannable offense. Point finale.
Recourse
With the exception of the bannable schemes listed above, CCP does not regard scamming as a petitionable offence. Like suicide ganking, scamming is one of New Eden's natural dangers, and it's up to players to protect themselves.
Once you've been scammed all you can do is set negative standings to the scammer and hope you catch them at a disadvantage one day in lowsec or nullsec.
Chat and Market Scams
Begging
This is the simplest scam around where a player asks for ISK donations in popular channels (trade hub local, NPC corp chat, etc.), and tell a story about how they lost their ship.
What you see
The player will plead for help in the local trade hub, sometimes apologizing for having to 'beg'. Where the character is created for this purpose there is sometimes a tendency to use a female avatar and name to exploit sexuality. The language used will be purposefully naive and constructed to express little knowledge of the cruel harsh aspects of the game.
How it works
Sympathy for the unfortunate is the aspect of human nature that they are tapping into and hoping to trick the more altruistic players into donating funds, ships and equipment to help the new unfortunate victim of the harsh game mechanics. In its most basic aspects it is social engineering of the human trait to help others who are a victim of circumstance. Though it is of course possible that they're telling the truth (you could ask for the link to their combat log), if you observe the dialogue in the channel it will be too consistently touching the right buttons to be evident manipulation of sympathy responses.
ISK doubling
This is one of the most common scams in Eve and is very popular in all the main trade hubs with frequent adverts spammed in local. The adverts will generally indicate that they are super rich players who want to give back to the game.
What you see
Local chat in which the scammer offers to send you a great deal of ISK if you send them some first. They support their legitimacy with satified customer testimonials (often alts or co-conspirators) and wallet links.
How it works
You'd really like to have more money, so you send them some money. They keep it, send you nothing, and block you.
The Margin Trading Scam
The Margin Trading Scam exploits the mechanic where a character with the Margin Trading skill can place buy orders and only place a portion of the ISK in escrow. If they then transfer all of their ISK away, the order will fail when someone tries to sell to it, essentially allowing them to make a fake buy order. It is also known as The Drunken Buy Order because it is often announced in local that a player must have been drunk when they placed a buy order. There are a couple of variations, but they both depend on margin buy orders failing and/or upon the victim not knowing the true value of the item they're trading.
What you see
The scammer announces in a chat channel (usually local) that a player must have been drunk when they put up their buy order and invites you to check it out with a link to the item being sold. They lament the fact that they can't afford to fill the buy order. Following the link, players will see a buy order offering a great deal more than the sell price of the item. If the player can act fast and deliver the items in the order before anyone else, they stand to multiply their ISK invested.
How it works
All numbers are examples.
- The scammer buys up all of an uncommon item in a region, say for 1B ISK each.
- They make a bunch of sale orders to sell them for around 2B ISK each.
- They put up a few buy orders for 500M ISK each.
- They put up a margin drunken buy order offering 5B ISK each with a minimum number, say 5.
- They transfer most of the money away from their drunken buy alt.
This is how they hope the victim will respond:
- The victim sees the opportunity to buy items for 2B ISK and immediately sell them for 5B ISK each.
- Scam 1: They buy enough items at 2B ISK to fulfill the buy order. This is above market value and the scammer has already made money.
- The victim submits a sell order for the 5 items. However, the buy order was on margin, and the drunken buyer does not have the cash to pay for it, so it fails.
- Scam 2: The sale will then revert to the next best buy order, which is for 500M each. 500M kinda looks like 5B if you're in a hurry, so if the victim clicks OK, the scammer buys the items at below market value.
How to recognize the scam
- Someone using chat to offer strangers the opportunity to make a lot of money.
- Look for buy orders with minimum volumes. Multiple sell orders can fill a single buy order, so there's no good reason for them.
- The buy order is for a low-volume item that you're not familiar with. If EVE-Central has any others on record, they're far away and way cheaper.
Contract Scams
The Three Ships
The Three Ships is a scam that tricks the victim into buying a overpriced ship because they just missed out on a good deal.
What you see
It's an announcement of a set of three sell contracts for ships, separated by a timer. The linked contract shows a desirable (often faction) ship being offered at a bargain price, but it's already gone. But the countdown timer is running and you might be able to scoop up one of the other two.
How it works
The scammer is actually selling two ships via three contracts.
- The first ship contact offers the ship that is at a considerably lower price than market value. The person who clicks on it will see the extremely low price but find they are just too late. Actually, the contract was deleted as soon as the link was made but before it was offered.
- The second contract ship offered will be a real ship, but just below the average market price, so the player who buys it will not have made much of a bargain.
- The third ship is the sting. Having missed out on two ships, a player not wanting to miss out again will race to click on that one, not noting the additional zeros that reprice the ship e.g. from 20 million to 200 million.
Never buy anything in a rush, and always read contracts carefully.
Courier Contract Ganking
It's a hauling contract where the intent is to kill the hauler and make them forfeit the collateral.
What you see
The Courier Contract will pay more per jump than average, like ten to thirty million for delivering on a route only five or ten jumps away. The collateral will be far higher than the item is worth.
How it works
The courier route will take the hauler through a low-sec or 0.5 system. While they are in that system, the scammers will destroy the hauler, forcing them to forfeit the collateral. The scammers get the collateral, a kill, and possibly the cargo as well. The victim loses the collateral, their ship, and possibly their pod.
How to recognize the scam
The contract will:
- be a only be available for a day;
- specify a collateral number worth way more than the cargo;
- be too big for a frigate but small enough to fit in an Industrial (more easily ganked) and not realistic for a Freighter for such a short haul;
- have a delivery route will be through low-trafficked systems and at least one 0.5 or less system (so the odd industrial passing through can be easily passive cargo scanned)
- Concord in the designated 0.5 system will have been previously baited to the furthest distance from the gank gate, to delay their response even more
Double WTB contracts
It's a contract that looks like a buyer willing to pay over market prices for expensive items (often PLEX) but the contract is actually for multiples.
What you see
It's a contract to buy items that seems to offer above-market rates. They are often linked to in local chat.
How it works
This scam exploits the fact that a contract's title need not match its contents. The contract title says something like, "WTB PLEX for 890M ISK," when the going rate is 750M, for example. However, the terms of the contract actual state that the buyer will pay 890M ISK for two PLEX. These contracts are often linked to in local chat.
Always take time to verify what a contract is asking for, and if you want a failsafe: only ever keep a single copy of an expensive mod (or PLEX) on hand when selling to WTB contracts.
Combined WTS/WTB contracts
It's a contract that sells items for ISK and the item.
What you see
It looks like a contract to sell an item for below market rates e.g. "WTS PLEX for 400M." They are often linked to in local chat.
How it works
Again, this exploits the idea that a contract's title and its contents do not need to match. In our example, the actual contract sells the PLEX for 400M and one PLEX. So the seller gets 400M and their item back. This is not always easy to spot, as the item up for "sale" and the price you pay are next to each other at the top of the screen, but the item you give is further down the screen.
Always take time to verify what a contract is asking for.
Other Miscellaneous Scams
Can flipping
Someone enters your mission space or ratting/mining belt and outright steals your loot or ore from a can, temporarily flagging themselves to you as a valid target. Sometimes they do this for a quick, small profit, but more often they're hoping to provoke you into firing on them. If you fire on them, they will then be free to attack you, possibly after swapping to a new ship. After destroying you (in almost all circumstances PvP-fitted ships will defeat PvE/mining-fitted ships) they can loot your wreck.
The safest approach to take is to simply allow your goods to be stolen. Better to lose a bit of loot than an expensive mission ship. See the pages on canflipping and ninja salvaging and theft for more details.
Can Baiting
Related to can flipping, but simpler. A player will put out a can and name it something like "free items" with some modules or ammo inside. They'll wait for someone to take the items and then destroy them as a thief. Someone who really wants to donate items to you will abandon the can so that it's blue. If it's still yellow then it's too good to be true. More sophisticated versions of this scheme are to fleet with someone for missions or incursions and give an item to you such as lyavite ore or your share of the loot, and then their friends pounce and destroy you.
CCP takes a dim view of can baiting in rookie systems, but it's fair game anywhere else.
Sale of intangibles
This is the epic tale of selling someone the Golden Gate bridge: someone's selling something that either has no worth, is not verifiable, or simply does not belong to them. For example selling a bookmark to a wormhole with any kind of assurance of what is or is not in there (in terms of sites to run as well as presence of a hostile corporation inside). Another example would be ransoming your ship and pod for the assurance that they'll let you go, then destroying you anyway.
Trade Window
This scam is purely a timing thing. This typically happens when you're selling something. Someone offers you a great price and asks you to trade it via the trade window instead of using a private contract. (They might claim to not have enough money for contract fees.) The scammer will enter the amount of isk in the window, and as soon as you drop the item, they'll 0-out the amount of money and quickly accept the trade. (They have to pull this scam in between the time you drop your item in the trade window and when you hit accept.)
To avoid this scam, never use the trade window when dealing with someone you don't trust when the item is of non-trivial value. (Contract fees are nothing compared to losing an expensive item).
Ambush sale
In this scam an item is available in the market or contract for a great deal cheaper than the average. The catch is that you'll either have to lowsec or nullsec in order to collect the item. When you undock after picking it up, bang. The scammer has a 50% chance of getting his item back and pulling the scam again, along with any fittings your ship had.
To avoid this scam, always check the route that will get you to an item. (Checking the sec status of the destination alone is not fool-proof as some highsec systems require traversal of low or null sec.)
Fittings without ship
This is a very common scam. Usually a scammer will link a contract selling a ship (often a Hulk) for a seemingly very low price. They'll say that they're offering the ship and all the fittings, while in fact the contract will only have the fittings. This relies on people not properly checking the items in the contract.
Multiples of 1000
This scam can involve market buy orders or contracts. Simply, the scammer sets up a buy order at 1000th the average price. It relies on people not noticing the difference between 121 thousand and 121 million.
This scam can also be run with markets, especially in less populace regions by offering ships or modules at 10x their price. For example if you're not careful and need a rifter, you might accept the only sell order in the region as the average, while they're selling at 100m instead of 100k.
This scam works can be assisted by someone announcing in local broadcasting the contract and announcing they are selling at the lower price when the contract is actually selling at the higher price.
Similar names
This is yet another contract scam where a scammer will advertise a ship or module as its faction variant (sometimes a faction variant that doesn't even exist!) and rely on people not checking the actual item being offered. (Someone might, for example, advertise a normal Raven as a Raven Navy Issue.) This can also work with modules with similar names such as a Pith C-Type in a contract advertised as an A- or X-Type. (A unit of the element Carbon masquerading as the valuable Charon freighter is a good -- and amusing -- example.)
Big Schemes
Some of Eve's richer players like to run banks, investment schemes or IPOs. Occasionally these are even legitimate! Generally, however, they are not -- remember that there's rarely a compelling reason for anyone else to make ISK for you, and that unlike in real life there are no significant consequences for fraud in New Eden.
Banks
There are no in-game systems for administrating and controlling in-game banks. Even if banks in Eve are started with the best of intentions, that much ISK concentrated in one place is an irresistable temptation. Most banks in Eve have ended with someone walking off with the money. You can confidently expect that any banks which haven't died in this way yet will do at some point.
Ponzi scheme
Those running a Ponzi scheme pretend that the money they receive is invested, and the profits are distributed to the investors via dividends. Actually, however, the dividends paid to existing investors are being funded by the money from new investors, and the administrators are pocketing the rest. When they've reached an amount of ISK in the fund that they're happy with, they simply take the money and run.
In 2009 Bernie Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison for stealing billions of dollars in a real-life Ponzi scheme. If Madoff was an Eve character, his player would simply have transferred the ISK to an alt and biomassed him.
Corp theft
Corporate (and alliance) theft is hard to avoid, because the person who intends to steal from you will wait as long as they need to in order to steal what they want. Corporate theft can work on many levels. As roles and trust grow, the opportunities to steal increase. It can't be emphasized enough that a person who's seriously looking to steal from the corporation will not show their intentions until things are too late.
You can guard against corp theft to some extent by never letting too much power and access to assets concentrate in one player's hands -- or, even more simply, by never having any valuable corporate assets in the first place! Making sure that all useful members of your corp have roles, too: a corp infiltrator with director-level access can instantly boot members with no roles, letting them, for example, kick all of a corp's combat-trained pilots and then slaughter the corp's miners.
Recruitment Scams
Reputable corporations usually don't ask for any kind of fees for joining. However, a fake corp -- or a real corp that's not actually interested in recruiting -- can entice potential recruits into applying and then charge a fee for joining. As an extension/variation, recruits might also be offered help transporting their assets to their new home via carrier/jump freighter; the scammers can charge an additional fee for this, and then take the recruits' assets too!
This scam is a time-honoured tradition among members of Goonswarm and TEST Alliance, though in their case it's carried out by individual members rather than by the corp per se.
Lotteries
It's very easy to fake a reputation and establish a lottery, so be cautious.
