Recent 'Greed' Scams

Who knows? Maybe they have gotten scammed before, maybe they will get scammed in a few months, maybe they will get scammed in some other game.

If a thief gets assaulted while robbing someone in their house, do you feel sorry for them?

Same concept here, someone gets burnt when trying to burn someone else. Granted, in this case they did leave their doors open for someone to walk right in. So they are in the wrong, but someone trying to take advantage of the door being left open is in the wrong too. One gets burnt, two go away happy.

As much as I love the concept of karma, justice is a much more tangible concept. Unless there is direct payment for the wrong done, it's simply unfair and should be righted. Obviously the person scammed did wrong, too, and got payment right away - fair. The scammer did wrong and walked off unscathed - unfair.

That really doesn't fit. Someone leaving their door open to burglars may be doing something stupid - but it isn't wrong. Their open door isn't hurting anyone but potentially themselves if taken advantage of.

This scam is plainly two parties (one person on one side, two on the other) who are trying to take advantage of the other. One side clearly has the unfair advantage of pre-planning. This is basically a predator seeking out other predators. This is more like a killer getting away with murdering another killer. The act of taking a life or scamming in the first place is wrong, and the fact that one side got away with a "crime" is wrong.

Still, from a personal PoV, it was clever and amusing

OMG!! I wrote that ages ago!! I feel so accomplished :P

Yeah, it's definitely a scam and should be cracked down on.

I meant leave their doors open with the intent for someone to try and rob them, just so they could beat the shit out of someone. Planned and all that.

You are all soooooo far behind, I've been doing this for ages. We actually used to call it power-trading, because you could easily make 200k in 20 minutes while hopping to english/french/german dists using 4 cheap greens that take 30 minutes to farm.
A guildy and I used to do this with terror scythes, mindclouders, and other greens that are really easy to get. It's simple: one person spams WTS terror scythe 50k, and another spams WTB terror scythe 60k. One would spam it in all chat, and the other in trade chat, making it less obvious that this is indeed a scam. Once someone bought the item from the first person and pmed the second, my guildy would kindly reply that he had just found one.
Another key thing to note is that we never did this one our real accounts, but on our second and (in my case) third accounts, which were not in the same guild.
People often pmed us both and informed us that there was another person in the district interested in the item, yet we often ignored them and kept spamming. People often took the bait, but if we saw no results after 5 minutes, then we would switch to German or French districts. We were both perfectly bilingual as well, so that really helped us to get to the poorer and more gullible crowds (french dists lol).
A key thing to note of is that both people need to have the item being traded in their inventories, because when someone thinks he got scammed, he will automatically ask you to see if the second person indeed has the item. At that point we would show him the item and say that we bought it from another person, and would provide the name of a guildy who is on vent with us. If that person tries to interrogate our guildy, he will give the answers we want him to give, to "prove" that the transaction was legit.
The trick to this is to make the person that you scammed feel like he was just unlucky. You should never ever say stuff like "pwnt!" or "lol i got u!", but instead try to sound somewhat sympathetic and say "well, that's unlucky!" or "I'm really sorry about that". It is always nice to make them feel guilty about it, by saying stuff like "wait! you were trying to resell my staff? Why didnt u just tell me that someone wanted to buy my staff!".
We made the most money during major events when there were dozens of english dists in Kamadan. I would start at district 3, and my guildy at district 1, and we would spam that district for about 20 seconds. We would then change to the next district (me to 4 and him to 2) and do the same, starting over after district 10. This would often yield the best results since most people dismiss the possibility of a scam if we are not both in the same district, not to mention that more people would see us spam.

I stopped doing this about 6 months ago because I maxed out on gold and had nothing to spend it on (I had already bought everything I wanted and I had a pretty decent income from sigils). I am just posting this because this is not a "recent" scam, it is manipulative economics. You make the prices seem higher than they should be by creating an artificial demand for the item in question. There are no rules against spamming "WTB" and not actually buying, therefore all these practices are somewhat legit. It is really the buyers fault for taking such a risk with his money.
If you have any questions about what we did and how we did it, feel free to ask. If you want to criticize me and call me a scammer, go ahead, I don't mind.

EDIT: My guildies and I also started the Winter dwarf rumors ("Don't kill him for 10 minutes and you'll get a surprise!"), made characters called "Kill Winter Dwarf" and "Winter Dwarf Killer" (and many other variations of the name), and went around all districts killing the winter dwarf. Cruel but fun!

Well you have a very warped definition of "power trading". The real definition is simply "buy low, sell high", not "sell high, while an accomplice offers to buy higher, and then once the initial trade is complete, have the accomplice refuse the buy offer and run". That's called a "scam".

I am well aware of the definition of power-trading. I'm just saying that we used to call it power trading because it was possibly the fastest way to trade multiple items for 50k+ in less than half an hour.
Look at it like a power nap, which is "thought by many to maximize the benefits of sleep versus time" (stolen from wikipedia).
This method of trading obviously maximizes the benefits of money versus time, therefore we found the name "power trading" to be a valid and suitable name.

Precisely.

Indeed.

This is a poor analogy. The homeowner's actions are not an assault (presuming that they do not use more force than they reasonably believe necessary) because their actions are justified by the principle of self-defense/defense of others/defense of property. Conversely, the perpetrators of these scams are not justified in any way; they aren't protecting anyone or anything; they are, in fact, the instigators.

That's a much better analogy. And, yes, I would feel bad - if only somewhat - for the burglar/victim, especially if his injuries were severe.

I see it as a scam as for one it is a lie on one players account (both really as you work toghter) and you are misleading people.

Still its never the kind of thing you could get banned for, but then again nither is any scamming.

Surley no one can see this as honest?

There is a well-established psychological concept called "congnitive dissonance" which occurs when a person trys to hold two contradictory beliefs at the same time. In order to resolve these conflicts the person will create explanations (often laughable to others) to resolve the contradiction.

For example, a person might simultaneously hold these two views:

"I scam people" and "I am not a complete tool."

Since these two views cannot be reconciled by a person with a normal sense of morality, the person has to invent explanations. For example, the person may convince himself he is actually teaching his victims valuable life lessons or that his victim deserves it or some other such nonsense.

It's a sad but sometimes amusing spectacle to watch the person develop the elaborate justifications to convince themselves that they are not , in fact, pathetic.

....
I don't consider its a scam, but sadly the ignorant majority does so best way to describe it with out a long winded example is... The 2sellers scam
Its still not a scam!

And you won't find anyway to police it in GW unless you police all trades... now thats not going to happen.

If you report the people, and you make anet waste time following it up, I'm sure if they even have half a brain they would say something like, "I didn't want to trade it for that mini!".... "Or he wouldn't accept my asking price."

Anet can't enforce any regulations on this issue.
For trade purposes it been done correctly, they have offered a price and a product. If you pay that price your accepting the agreement to trade.

All person B is doing by spamming selling mini for <blank> is slightly influencing your sale. Once again most people are approaching this position with the intent to rip one of the people off.
Buy the item and then trade for the mini which is weirdly under-priced!..

Wait now there attempting to take advantaged of someone, buying something for less then market value. SCAMMERS SCAMMERS SCAMMERS

This is no different to buying low and selling high, @#$% ban half the trader in GW

Or half the people who attempt to trade an item saying check the price on guru... umm these pricing forums are majorly lacking an update.

Summation

I won't be replying to this topic afte this post, the replies have started to boarder insulting remarks and agressive uneducated debate rehasing points that have already been mentioned.

I think one putcome that can be positive for all paries involved is "If its sounds to go to be true.. it is"
People effected by this con only have there own greed to blame, they want to rip of one person to gain an item of higher value themselves. Making them the third scam artist if this is to be defined a scam.

But for the trade aspect all the requirements are offered, a price, an item, and a second trade for the first item. The only way to stop this is by assigning all items a basis value... Wait they already do have a base value, but that not the market value which is largely determinded by the average player. The golden rule of trade is to advertise a price and find someon willing to by the item for that much, sadly too many people consider this alone a scam. For these people I see no solution short of regulated prices imposed by Anet.

that's essentially how the united stated has justified going to war for the last 120 years. (spanish/american war? check...wwi? yup, the brits and us knew the lucitania was going to get pwnt by the germans...pearl harbor? yup, the japanese actually made it clear to the us government that they were going to annihilate the pacific fleet, conveniently converged in 1 port...i got nothing for korea...gulf of tonkin was another lie...saddam hussein sent multiple feelers to the bush administration prior to invading kuwait in which bush told them we'd be cool with it...hussein and bush go way back...and 9/11; al qaeada was originated from the saudi royal family and those are buddies of the bush family...draw your own conclusions there...

so yeah, old news...standard tactic...use common sense and it's not a problem.

I am sorry, but this is a scam.

Hallomik is right on target when he describes the mental process through which scammers go.

I have a nice book called: The Con Artist handbook, the secrets of hustles and scams. Its written by a guy that teaches how to recognize scams and not fall for them.

He describes several psychological attributes that con artists are missing, and that the rest of us take for granted. Here is a brief excerpt of each one:

Conscience: no room for recriminations when you fleece people.

Responsibility: they absolve themselves of any responsibility for crimes commited. Their mantra is: "they had it coming".

Respect: they believe that the world is divided into suckers and those who are clever enough to take advantage of them.

Faith: They have no faith in the human nature.They believe everyone is as amoral as them.

Bonds: they have no interest in forming meaningful relationships, friendships or partnerships.

Other beliefs: hard work is for suckers.

And lastly, they genuinely love what they do, getting a thrill out of pulling a successful con.

All in all, they are pretty pathetic... so much so that they cannot even realize it!

OK, maybe I missed something, but I thought we were talking about misleading trades in Guild Wars.

It's not a scam, if the buyer accepts the trade it's not a scam. People get smart so they try this trick, sucks to be the person dumb enough to fall for this one. If you consider this a scam consider all power trading a scam.

The way to beat this is to have the crap item they want to trade Kuunavang for

They will just ignore you lol....

Then what is a scam? Newsflash: every scam involves people voluntarily accepting to do something. Without that element, it would be a theft or a hack. Could you name something that you do consider to be a scam?

And how is powertrading anything like this?

w/e if I fall for a scam I'm not going to report it, I was stupid and I learned from my mistakes. I've only fallen for a few scams, I am very aware of what's on my trade screen now. IMO if you accept the trade it's a trade and you agreed with the item(s) being traded. So what if someone bought a noob green for 30k it has nothing to do with the guy trading the Kuun for that green. The person bought the green, ok no one said he would get a mini Kuun for it. For all we know the other guy already traded it, it's not a scam. The greed of a player is not a scam. The player was trying to scam the guy trading the Kuun for a green so if you think about it the person falling for this trick is a scammer also. Don't try defending the guy falling for this, their greed is what causes their being scammed or tricked.

Power trading can be considered a scam, you buy an item for cheap and sell it for high or the right price. You have knowledge of an items price and buy it from people that do not know item prices if you look into it power trading is as much a scam as any other scam out there.

/end rant

Power trading can turn out just like this. Buy something that you think you can sell for more, but if you turn out to not be able to sell it for more, you lose out.

They are taking a gamble when they buy it, just like power trading.

And what he means is....They say "WTS <insert item here> for 50k".

The "victim" buys that item for 50k. There is no swapping items, making them drop it or anything of the sort. They know what they are buying. They know its overpriced. They still buy it. They SHOULD know that the other buyer isn't guaranteed to be there forever. They take the gamble. They buy the insanely overpriced item, knowing that it is overpriced, and knowing that the Bone Dragon deal might already be gone by the time they get the other item.

Trying to benefit on other peoples ignorance. Thats what all parties involved in this are doing.

And I am done with this thread, it has become boring.

Well, you know, that's interesting. What scams did you fall for?

A scam, by definition is a fraudulent scheme for making a quick profit; to defraud. The very fact that in order for this to work, there needs to be two people, and one person needs to be lying (saying they will buy or trade for something, when they don't intend to), that is a fraudulent scheme. You can spin it any way you want, but there is fraud involved. It's hard to prove, obviously, and by the way things work, nothing is technically against the rules, but it's still fraud, it's still a scam, and it's still wrong.

Now, you can claim up and down that there's nothing against the rules, like any attorney would, but only because of a lack of evidence. Unfortunately, the only counter to this is the spreading of information. Anytime I see someone attempting this, I will announce it in party search and chat. I can only hope others start doing that, too.

Then power trades and the elite traders are all scammers.

They buy items low and sell them for higher prices, I'll get a list started and we can report them.

Oh wait, Anet can't do anything about it, because by there own definitions its not a scam, Since an item is offered and a price is agreed upon.

Hell I'm even gonna start doing it, since u can't get banned!

How are they scammers by the definition? How are they defrauding anyone? Buying something lower than the going rate, and selling for higher than the going rate isn't defrauding anyone. The person selling for lower is making up for the lost profit in the speed at which they sell the item. Time = money. The person selling for higher knows they will sell eventually using connections to people they know need certain things, or simply holding onto it long enough. That's power trading. No one is trying to defraud anyone else, they all know the game.

No as u can see by the replys in this thread using any methods of selling something for higher then its value is scamming, taking advantage, wrong, inmoral, a sin against baby jesus!

And may all those people burn in the fires of mount Doom!

My post was so awesome the guru server wanted it posted twice!

Since this thread isn't going anywhere after FOUR PAGES, closed.