Eve Online Hit By Embezzlement Scandal

The head of Eve Online's largest in-universe banking system has been banned for some shady monetary transactions. He was removed from the game for illicitly withdrawing Eve Online currency and reselling it for real money to pay off debts. While the entire affair may not have been illegal, and internal embezzlement is not necessarily against game rules, the combination of exchanging game money for actual cash is not allowed. You can find more on the scheme at Reuters.

EBank, EVE's largest player-run financial institution which has thousands of depositors, is at the center of the scandal.

"Basically this character was one of the people that been running EBank for a while. He took a bunch of (virtual) money out of the bank, and traded it away for real money," said Ned Coker, of the Icelandic company CCP, which developed the game.

The CEO of EBank, a 27-year-old Australian tech worker who identified himself only as Richard and used the online name Ricdic, embezzled about 200 billion interstellar kredits, the game's virtual currency.

He broke the rules of the game by exchanging the stolen virtual funds for $6,300 Australian

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Ironically, if Ricdic had merely stolen the online money he could have stayed in the game. But exchanging the virtual cash for real dollars broke the rules and CCP banned Richard's EBank accounts.