Beware the scammer, the thief, the hacker

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Hello everyone,

just a quick update. After talking to my Polish colleague Dom1n, it seems that once again fake gold is on the rise.

Some of you who were around WoT forums a year and a half ago might remember what this is:

It’s basically a scam, that uses gift shop. Some 3rd party (not Wargaming) promises you to sell you cheap gold. Here is how Wargaming describes it on their website:

Tempted by an offer which usually sounds too good to be true, you pay a swindler to purchase the discounted gold he offers. After receiving your payment the scammer buys the gold from our website at full price using a stolen credit card (this is called “carding”). He sends you the gold in form of a gift that you receive in the game. Then, when the real owner of the credit card or his bank notices the unauthorized activity, they withdraw the money from us for the purchase of the gift package which annuls the transaction. But since the gold has already been credited to you, we’re forced to temporarily suspend your account as its associated balance becomes negative. To unlock it again you – the initial gift recipient – will need to pay us the full amount of the value of the gold you received to finally equal out your balance. The defrauder gets your money; you lose time, temporarily even your access, and get stuck with a new bill on top of it all. A less common but similar way of fraud is when the impostor uses a regular bank card and then himself orders his bank to withdraw the money for the transaction claiming that the associated services were not rendered. (This is called “fraud”).

Be aware that recent experience from the Polish community (so called “Allegro Gold”, Allegro being a Polish trade portal, infamous in the past for this stuff) shows that Wargaming is cracking very hard on this stuff. There is a post on the main forums.

In other words: if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. Use common sense and be careful.

55 thoughts on “Beware the scammer, the thief, the hacker”

  1. I lost one of my accounts for this. It was the fact that i traded with the guy before that made me accept the gift i never payed for.. Now i am in -89 euros on that account, that i will never pay for such a game so it stays banned forever.

  2. Wow this sucks this is realy easy to exploit,

    for example, You make someone real mad by something in-game he rages. He sends you an gift shop item. He asks paypal to get their money back. Your account will be banned and you have to pay to unlock it.

    • I think you have the option not to receive the gift sent by someone. I remembered a warning before, not sure where, that do not accept gift from someone you don’t know because of these similar case. So I guess there’s an option to reject the gift. Can someone verify this?

      • I dont think that someone would reject an “free” gift they would just think damn thats nice a free gift.

      • I’m not sure you have the ability to outright reject a gift however I KNOW that you can at least elect to not accept the gift and once a period of time goes by (30 days I think) then the unaccepted gift will default back to the person who gifted it in the first place.

        • I see.. so just don’t accept or don’t acknowledge the gift and wait for 30days just to be sure, unless you verified that they really intend to give you that gift. I think this is much better that accept it blindly from stranger and your account get’s locked until you pay the same amount.

    • This reminds me of all the benefits of Alipay, it’s one of the things that make me enjoy being Chinese.

    • If WG is forcing the receivers of gifts to pay, then WG is the one scamming here, if you get a gift and then somebody doesn’t pay for it, then WG can only take the gift back, if that is not possible, they have no right to go at you, they have to go against whoever pay for it.

      and then you go talking about common sense.. for fucks sake..

      • exactly, WG does it that way because it makes them more money, not because it’s the right or reasonable thing to do.

      • Lol what retarded logic is that ? You only lose what was gifted to you . I you feel that a gift is a risk don’t accept it. The onus is on you .

        • no, you get your account banned until you pay off the gift. WG won’t just take the gift away, even if it was possible (ie gold not spent yet). Because of that, you should never, ever accept gifts of any kind from anyone because it might cost you the account.

          That’s a really reasonable situation – if you’re a dimwit.

      • >they have to go against whoever pay for it.
        Considering that it’s difficult to catch eFraud as a government agency, Wargaming is hardly in a position to do more than patrol the new accounts it receives and hope the hackers are stupid enough to name their sockpuppet accounts abcdefg123 and associate it with 50 credit cards.

        In addition, WG, like every other merchant which accepts credit cards, must pay around a 2-4% fee to the credit card company for every transaction.

        Lastly:
        “It is essential to understand that when you take a credit card payment, you are borrowing money — at least as far as the merchant service providers and their underwriters are concerned. The industry you are in, the type of business you do and your personal financial situation will be relevant to their perception of the risk involved. But I found, to my surprise, that the companies I dealt with were unimpressed by my perfect, multiyear record as a merchant with no chargebacks(a return of funds to a consumer).” – New York Times

        WG gets fucked as well by fraudulent purchases.

  3. recently on some games, some guy spam the chat saying “visit this web site, they sell cheap gold” i can’t remember the site.. I wonder if he’s one the recent scammer you talked about or just someone who got fooled by it!

    • People have done that in Diablo 3 (and similar games) since the games were released. It isn’t a new idea, like SS said, it’s just on the rise again.

  4. Common sense and WoT Players generally don’t go well together.

    But its good that you pay attention and bring those that visit this website (The more savvy people) awareness to the problem.

    • Well they spam those website’s is tier 1 batlles only so that are new player that maby dont know it

  5. The feeble-minded being scammed due to their own stupidity. Great.
    Why would you make a warning post about this?
    Why is this wrong?

    • To warn the less feeble-minded. If after this, they still go and buy cheap gold, and get scammed, then they are hopeless.

      • Feinel WTF do you bother coming here? No need to reply it is a retorical question.

        • Why are you upset?

          One looks at my comment and one of 3 things can happen: you disagree, you agree or you are butthurt that I’m calling you feeble-minded because you are one of the victims.

          So, which is it? (This is also a rHHHHHHHetorical question.

    • It’s called a friendly warning. Good guy SS is just trying to help prevent players being scammed if he can help it regardless of whether they are so called “feeble-minded” or not. It’s something nice people do, you clearly wouldn’t know anything about that.

      • “It’s something nice people do, you clearly wouldn’t know anything about that.”

        It’s amusing, whenever I’m posting negative yet to a degree justifiable criticism or opinion, people seem to always be able to bring up a lack of a behaviorally action from my part.

        I’m a jolly nice fella. :)

    • It’s not about the feebleminded getting shafted. It’s about the scumbags profiteering from this.

      • Good point Grumpy and well said.

        It seems that some people identify with the scumbags – could it be that they are like minds?

  6. These type of scams are common to any games. I remembered before on Diablo3, there’s a lot of private message sent to me about these websites, same as GW2 etc.. I think many players fell on these types of scams that’s why they are still prevalent.

  8. Standard scam for many games and game trading in particular. The scammer buys a game or a bundle (eg. Humble Bundle) with a stolen credit card, then sells it for a really cheap price, and when the real owner pronounce the card stolen, purchase and games get revoked and the victim is left with nothing.

  9. i bought my jgtiger 8,8cm in shere khan package from not-wargaming and everything’s all right (it was in july)
    price was almost 30% better than in wargaming gift shop

    • It can take some time – some guys were banned after more than a half a year in the “Allegro-gate”.

      And really – how can you make profit when you sell something 30% cheaper while having to pay the full price? When you don’t buy with your own money and “resell” to deers that go for that “-30%” without using their brains.

  13. There are people who buy gold from official Wargaming site?! LOL…
    Seriously I know like a dozen of ppl who farm accounts for sale and getting gold / premium tanks from 3rd part sellers is easy and way cheaper.

    • Right until you lose your account. Go ask Polish community, there was 300+ page rage topic about it.

  14. It is shameful that scammers use the same old way to profit, but it is even more shameful that people still fall for this.

  15. Better make sure not buy anything wot related from a different shop then theirs, so you can’t even be tempted.

  16. I have seen a few of these scammers driving around in low tier battles on NA spamming the chat with these cheap gold offers. One of them was even instantly teamkilled for spamming that crap.

  17. In fact if someone got forced to pay for a gift, they should sue WG, they have no right to make you pay for something that you got gifted, if they force your account, then more reasons to sue them, ’cause that’s illegal.

    If they can’t get the product back, they have to get their money from whoever gifted it, any action against the receiver of the gift is pure extortion, they go against you because you are the easy and retarded prey with no knowledge of law and no common sense.

    • No if you take a product back from someone that actually paid for it . That is fraud . In the end the gift goes back to the person who paid for it . And no one is forced to pay for a gift ,you should be smart enough not to accept gifts from people you don’t know.

  18. well, if someone is so stupid to think that this is legal and the person of offer is just a friendly guy who wants to help others…..you deserve to lose money and get banned! Wake up! This World is full of retards.

    • Errr, wat? It’s a warhammer 40k reference. “Beware of the alien, the mutant, the heretic.”

  23. One thing to note, WG mussied up their explanation of /why/ hackers would give away free gold at a discount. The money from the transaction itself isn’t their chief concern, though your money is an added bonus. The point of ‘carding’ is to verify the data necessary to use a stolen card. Victim B’s money is cake icing for the primary goal of the operation, but is no less screwed when either the hacker finally maxes the card or the victim realizes his card is stolen.

    So not only are you unwittingly abusing somebody else’s credit card for no real gain, paying the hacker for services that will be taken so he profits, you are part of a scheme in order to validate the card’s data in the first place.