Bank Fraud in Cyberworld! Is no place safe?

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/08/virtual-bank-in-eve-freezes-accounts-due-to-deficit.ars EVE Online's largest player-controlled virtual bank, Ebank, just can't seem to catch a break these days. A few months after it was revealed that the company had been defrauded of a staggering amount of cash, it turns out that the institution's digital vaults are far more barren than many realized,... [more]

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/08/virtual-bank-in-eve-freezes-accounts-due-to-deficit.ars EVE Online's largest player-controlled virtual bank, Ebank, just can't seem to catch a break these days. A few months after it was revealed that the company had been defrauded of a staggering amount of cash, it turns out that the institution's digital vaults are far more barren than many realized, leading to an in-game freezing of accounts for any individual or organization that happened to have invested any InterStellar Kredits (ISK) with the bank. Early this summer, it came to light that a veteran EVE player (known only as "Ricdic") had embezzled —and then sold in the real world— over 200 billion ISK from Ebank, causing a run on the virtual financial institution. However, this was just the beginning of the problems for the player-owned bank. Recently installed Ebank Chairman Ray McCormack admitted that the bank had been mismanaged, and rules, safeguards, and controls were not enforced. As a result, it's been revealed that Ebank is 380 billion ISK poorer thanks to a number of defaulted loans. Because of the aforementioned mismanagement, it apparently took the bank's new officers a while to figure out just how far in the red their institution is. At the moment, customer accounts will remain frozen until the bank manages to stabilize. According to McCormack, "withdrawals will be allowed once the bank achieves a maintainable equity status of 90% (1.8t currently); they will be stopped again should that fall below 80%." The main problem with Ebank's account freezing is that it could do some serious harm to the game's economy, mainly because players won't be able to withdraw their funds in order to pay for in-game goods and services. Exactly how long a recovery will take is currently anyone's guess, though, as it turns out that the board of directors revealed that the bank is currently facing a deficit of roughly 1.2 trillion ISK, with the amount increasing by approximately 12 billion ISK a month. [less]