Belarus: a WoT tank thief criminally charged

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Source: http://habrahabr.ru/post/212307/

Hello everyone,

apparently, in Belarus, WoT tank theft is taken very, very seriously. A criminal investigation was opened in the Belarus’ Brest region in a case of a World of Tanks account theft. WoT player, a 30 year old man from the town of Pruzhany contacted local police and said that his WoT account was stolen. He said to the police that his account contained an IS-8 tank and he spent like 1,2 mil BYR (cca 91 Euro) on that account.

After the report, the police contacted Wargaming, that helped them find the thief, because the account was continuously in use. The account was also blocked as a result. According to the police, the “hacker” managed to steal the account using the owner’s e-mail, because the password was really simple to guess.

Either way, according to the report, the “hacker” was charged with the crime of “illegal access to computer information”.

22 thoughts on “Belarus: a WoT tank thief criminally charged”

  3. The sad thing is, that Belarus is the one who brought justice to such a case. In other countries, police would most likely laugh their ass off or roll their eyes and the only possible way for reimbrusment would be via lawsuit, where the plaintiff would have quite a hard work proving his rights. Not impossible, but still.

    • I don’t know about where you live, but where I live the police are far too busy with actual, you know, crimes, to be bothered with tracking down some idiots video game e-tanks that he lost because his password was shit.

      This just reminds me of a video from my area where a guy called the police because McDonalds got his order wrong and wouldn’t reimburse him… and he ended up being charged with wasting the time of police by holding up a 911 operator who could’ve been on-call for an actual serious crime.

      The world needs LESS people calling the police over irrelevant crap, not more.

      • The difference here is, that you were robbed of money. It is not important if you had 100€ just in your pocket sticking out or in your vault (well, it does matter for an actual punishment but it is still an offence). Problem is, people do not realize that what is on internet is not “free to get” and there is not an anarchy as one may think. There is no anonymity either. Some people can run and hide from being tracked, but an average person can not. If you steal something on internet, it is still stealing, as intelectual property is still property protected by law. And, I do not know where you live, but here (sadly) property is protected much more than an actual life, stealing few thousands € can get you more time in jail than a murder in many cases. Anyway, you are clearly out of your mind if you compare real loss of 100€ to possible dispute of 5€ or less, depending on an item that was supposedly wrong while actual loss caused by wrong order was perhaps even less (having tomato when you did not wanted to have it is worth what? 10c? …) Also, such an account can be given even real value in money (as in time invested into it), as there is “black market” of accounts on eBay or somewhere, it was quite an issue, IIRC even here on FTR was some article about it or on official forums.

        This issue goes actually futher than you can ever imagine, as there is whole problematic issue about multiple small thefts, which are problematic in terms of punishment while the thief can achieve huge gain and violations can be neglected due to insignificant amounts (there were cases where someone was stealing few cents from hundreds of thousands accounts and it was quite a problem for prosecutor). And the whole problem of small knowledge of law in society as whole. But you know what? Ignorantia juris non excusat. If you do not know some law exists, it does not matter on its application.

        Maan your logic… so if you have shit fence and leave your door unlocked and someone then steals 100 € from your table, then you would not do anything :) Good to know, I am sure your neighbours would find that as an useful information. Not even getting to the point that 91€ in Belarus are quite a lot, it is 20% of average net income.

  4. Listen carefully and you will hear a faint rumbling sound coming from the east – it’s the sound of Belarus hackers taking an involuntary dump in their pants.

  5. Technically speaking the same would hold true for Germany. But then the only Cybercrime our Policeforce is combating is illegal downloading of music files…

  6. Possible in EU countries too, but the trough a lawsuit which costs would be higher then all premium tanks in the shop combined and multiplied x3.

  8. (First post here, yey!)

    A bit concerns my profession, so I can’t resist:
    The same would apply in every country party to the CoE 200 Cybercrime Convention. The punishable conduct is the unathorized login itself, possible changes made can be constitute a more serious crime, just does any monetary damage he causes.
    (The same applies to any information system, really. If someone would log in unathorized with my account to this forum, would be punishable the same way. There are many such criminal processes regarding FB, Gmail, etc., you would not believe how creative people are when try to harm each other. Would you be happy if e.g. someone would log in to your Uni’s system and change your exam’s date? i guess not. And this is (petty, but still) a crime.)

    Rog

  10. Belarus is a hardcore dictatory … they know how to make people happy, they have proper police-force for that :S

  11. There was similar cases in Poland, no regarding WoT, but other on-line games.

    According to Polish law even your virtual property is still your property, and you got same law protection to it, as any “normal” real thing. So when someone steal your game account, he commits crime, you can go to nearest police station, tell them about it, and he will be chased by police, and prosecuted for the cost of government like any normal thief, for instance shop lifter. If he can not give you your property back in same condition as it was before he needs to pay you in cash for lost value. But, and this is important, the equivalent of “stolen” goods need to exceed 60 EUR.

    So any home made hacker, don’t steal polish accounts, you can get to prison for it!