ZOS! 1 billion+ GOLD LAUNDERING !! - (it was, now 1.25 billion+) please prioritize it.

OsManiaC

Fiktius wrote: »

RefLiberty wrote: »

karthrag_inak wrote: »

where are they getting all the gold that they need to launder? 100's of millions?

Bots?

Bots are often the case, when gold laundering is happening via guild stores. I've seen (and reported + blacklisted) some of those laundering players during these years when I've been playing this game, so technically this is not new thing nor surprise to me.
However those laundered amounts of gold which OP mentioned and these people just did through PC EU guilds makes me question the origin of gold. At earlier cases when I've spotted laundered gold, it was case of couple of millions, not hundreds of millions in very short amount of time...

And the fact that these launderers joined in active trade guilds which are keeping close eye on statistics, it tells me that they didn't bother hide their actions and based on how quickly these cases GMs reported, it looks like launderers were in hurry.
Perhaps ZOS could take a look into this and track the source.

@Fiktius , why I am remembering the guys that got away good with the gold they got and the "haste" of ZOS in update23 fiasco?

VaranisArano

tyggerbob wrote: »

So.. just get this clear.. are they trying to hide the fact that they are buying gold with crowns, which is not against the rules right now, as far as I know, or are we talking about real world money laundering? If that's the case, how do you get the 'clean money' out of the game on the other side? That's kind of a mandatory requirement for money laundering.
Just curious what the big concern is here.
TB

Typically this is not a gold for crown gifts because that's allowed.

Typically, this is a "I'll pay X amount real currency (dollars, what have you) in return for X amount of gold" type situation. The mail system will sometimes flag large transfers of gold, so transferring through guild traders is the usual method. You'd pay them the real currency, then price your Jute super high so that only your intended buyer is going to purchase it and then you get the gold.

The idea being that you get "clean gold" from sending it through the trader system. It doesn't really work that way, though, as ZOS can track the gold and still remove it if them deem it came from a problematic source. Whether or not ZOS bothers, well, that's why people do it.

OsManiaC

oh crap gold sellers are mad at me now

OK SORRY GUYS KEEP GOING

Fiktius

@OsManiaC You're not only one who was thinking about that U23 fiasco recently, when this laundering case popped up.
It made me question did ZOS actually fix the problem as well as they thought they did.

Anyway, I also thank you for bringing this case up! ZOS can put their investigating cap back on and check out what's going on here.

Emma_Overload

OsManiaC wrote: »

Emma_Overload wrote: »

So what? Why are you snooping on other peoples transactions in the first place?

It would be great of all the busybodies on these forums did something useful like ban that crook in Rawlkha who keeps selling fake Spell Power Pots. Now THAT is a lynch mob I would be happy to join!

Sorry, I could not understand your post. You want us to look the other way when suspicious activities happening?

If other peoples' activities are not clearly causing a problem, then it's a good idea to mind your own business. I don't see anything in these screenshots that indicates a problem.

I then pointed out that time and energy would be better spent banning an actual SCAMMER. What's hard to understand about that?

whoathere

AFAIK people who are buying this gold are not going through the crown sales. They are buying the gold straight from the player, usually around 15-20 euro for 1m gold. If they sell it for 15 euro, it's actually cheaper to go through the gold launderer than the crown store. Of course keep in mind that I am getting this information second hand from a fellow GM who has looked into this.

Even with quick googling, I found a website that is selling 1m gold for around £10. Crowns are usually selling for 350g through the crown trade, so to sell 1m gold I would need to buy 2,858 crowns. This would cost me about £18.99 for 3,000 crowns. For a person it would be more cost effective to just buy gold through a third party website for £10 and be done with it.

ZOS should be worried about this, they are losing out on real money due to these gold launderers. It's not going to go away by itself. It used to be that these transactions were very private, but now, they're out in the opne, more than likely trying to advertise their product.

ZOS can either adapt and ban, or they can lose money, it's their choice.

RefLiberty

OsManiaC wrote: »

oh crap gold sellers are mad at me now

OK SORRY GUYS KEEP GOING

Oke, so that's pretty much it, classic gold selling operation for real world money. Source are bots, stolen accounts or whatever.
Afaik it is bannable offense in every known mmo that ever existed.
Case clear.

Jaimeh

Wow, those are some expensive carrots...

Reverb

Zeni is unlikely to take any action on this. They should, but they won’t. They’ve never has much interest in looking into reported TOS violations. It’s a “we’ll do that if we ever have free time” situation.

tyggerbob

@whoathere Thanks.. I get it now.I thought we were talking about laundering the actual RW money and not the gold. That makes much more sense. I'm sure if it was former, LEA and hopefully ZOS would take a keaner interest.

VaranisArano

Emma_Overload wrote: »

OsManiaC wrote: »

Emma_Overload wrote: »

So what? Why are you snooping on other peoples transactions in the first place?

It would be great of all the busybodies on these forums did something useful like ban that crook in Rawlkha who keeps selling fake Spell Power Pots. Now THAT is a lynch mob I would be happy to join!

Sorry, I could not understand your post. You want us to look the other way when suspicious activities happening?

If other peoples' activities are not clearly causing a problem, then it's a good idea to mind your own business. I don't see anything in these screenshots that indicates a problem.

I then pointed out that time and energy would be better spent banning an actual SCAMMER. What's hard to understand about that?

I confess I'm rather curious as to your alternate explanation for what's going on here where what's been shown isn't indicative of a problem.

We do know from past disciplinary actions that transactions like these have been linked with gold-selling from outside sites. While it's possible that these are completely innocent sales of Surilie Grapes for nearly 10 million, that's also the sort of sale that would raise eyebrows in any trading guild I've been in on PC. (And don't even go "mind your own business" because for trading guilds on PC, checking member sales is literally part of the business for any guild with sales requirements.)

Note that ZOS does prohibit buying and selling gold in exchange for anything in the real world as against the TOS. Pointing out transactions like these are a good first step, allowing ZOS to investigate further to find out if its legit or there's something else going on.

KingMagaw

This happens regularly - It is just rarer people like the OP post about it.


Botters gain materials. Sell materials get gold. Sell gold for £/$. Listing in gold traders means the gold seller has multiple inflated listings active, makes a deal off site with instructions to buy a certain item to give the gold while player transfers £/$.

In my experience the specific people who are trading like this are well entrenched with multiple accounts.

Waynerx8

VaranisArano wrote: »

Emma_Overload wrote: »

OsManiaC wrote: »

Emma_Overload wrote: »

So what? Why are you snooping on other peoples transactions in the first place?

It would be great of all the busybodies on these forums did something useful like ban that crook in Rawlkha who keeps selling fake Spell Power Pots. Now THAT is a lynch mob I would be happy to join!

Sorry, I could not understand your post. You want us to look the other way when suspicious activities happening?

If other peoples' activities are not clearly causing a problem, then it's a good idea to mind your own business. I don't see anything in these screenshots that indicates a problem.

I then pointed out that time and energy would be better spent banning an actual SCAMMER. What's hard to understand about that?

I confess I'm rather curious as to your alternate explanation for what's going on here where what's been shown isn't indicative of a problem.

We do know from past disciplinary actions that transactions like these have been linked with gold-selling from outside sites. While it's possible that these are completely innocent sales of Surilie Grapes for nearly 10 million, that's also the sort of sale that would raise eyebrows in any trading guild I've been in on PC. (And don't even go "mind your own business" because for trading guilds on PC, checking member sales is literally part of the business for any guild with sales requirements.)

Note that ZOS does prohibit buying and selling gold in exchange for anything in the real world as against the TOS. Pointing out transactions like these are a good first step, allowing ZOS to investigate further to find out if its legit or there's something else going on.

Well said, you would have to question someone's motives for thinking this is innocent or normal practice, you would really need a Surilie Grapes fetish at those prices.

JN_Slevin

How in the world are those people getting this amount of gold? I do not understand it.

IF those are botters (most likely) you would have to do that for years. Even with multiple bots...

This is really bad.. This could disrupt the whole economy.

Most of the comments here condeming this are because, if botters (or whatever) can get this amount of gold, wihout any action from ZOS just means they clearly dont give 2 *** about whats happening there.

But to be honest, i can't imagine all this coming from botting. Probably some leftover gold from u23 or something...

I can't even imagine how this game would look if bots would be banned on sight.. Maybe this will show them the scale of those things and they realize that they need to take action...

OsManiaC

in case anyone cannot reach the forum or this post;

parallel topic in reddit

https://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/eaxb4x/1_billion_gold_laundering_happened_in_pc_eu/

doomette

Emma_Overload wrote: »

So what? Why are you snooping on other peoples transactions in the first place?

It would be great of all the busybodies on these forums did something useful like ban that crook in Rawlkha who keeps selling fake Spell Power Pots. Now THAT is a lynch mob I would be happy to join!

Just investigate shady activities that that affect me me meeeeeee.

OsManiaC

Guys, unfortunately, happened again

Thrasher91604

How in the heck is a farming bot able to amass so much gold? Any sales that generates that much would surely disrupt the economy or am I underestimating the size of the economy?

Maybe this explains the drop in price for nirncrux.

RefLiberty

Thrasher91604 wrote: »

How in the heck is a farming bot able to amass so much gold? Any sales that generates that much would surely disrupt the economy or am I underestimating the size of the economy?

Maybe this explains the drop in price for nirncrux.

You are underestimating the power or Chinese & India farmers.

eso_lags

how do you prove this?

Milo

eso_lags wrote: »

how do you prove this?

Check sales, see something suspicious (e.g Random Berries for multiple milions of Gold), write ZOS, (and now what should happen) ZOS sees it, says, "hey, this is an awful lot of gold for some random berries, lets check where this gold comes from", then ZOS traces the gold back and checks if the gold is legit or some weird things are happening on the account involved.

D0PAMINE

No one is putting lemons for sale at 950k unless they're moving gold.

Nestor

I am still wondering why people are buying gold. After a point, there is not all that much you can do with it.

The only thing that makes sense is Crowns as that is how you are going to get a character up and running quicky.

Nestor

And, i have yet to see anything legitimate sell for more than 2 or 3 million. And those are a few certain rare items. It would not take much to stop these stupid high sales. Or ban people based on these sales until they make their case they are a legitimate player.

OneWhomWaits

Actually not worth entering the fray. ZOS does track this stuff give it time

Nebthet78

I figure the people who are looking for that much gold are only those who are buying Trials HM carries so they can get the skins and what not. Other than that, there isn't really any thing worth that much gold in the game, unless you are someone who has to have something before anyone else.

Ban the lot of them.

Nyladreas

Wasn't there a huge guild trader gold exploit when they introduced multi-bidding? I'm thinking this guy is someone who slipped through the crack down and is NOW trying to launder the gold most probably thinking people have forgotten all about it, in hopes of not being caught.

No...wait... THIS IS DEFINITELY WHAT'S HAPPENING HERE, AND THIS *** THOUGHT HE WON!

This is billions of gold we're talking here. I seriously doubt we're seeing a result of botting. This is straight up exploiting.

Chaos2088

I should be shocked and appalled.....but im impressed.

Tsar_Gekkou

The only way Zos really bans people for selling gold is if they admit it. One guy was bragging about selling gold in zone chat recently and got banned pretty quick after being reported. Apparently, people who buy gold are mostly safe from bans. Kinda like how arresting drug dealers is prioritized over random junkies.

Mr_Walker

Emma_Overload wrote: »

If other peoples' activities are not clearly causing a problem, then it's a good idea to mind your own business.

No.