Online "banker" runs off with cash, avatars cry foul

It might have been a scene out of some movie about the Great Depression. Hundreds of frantic people tearing their hair out as they mob the doors to a bank, only to realize that the bank's owners, along with their money, had vanished into thin air.

This scene, however, took place not in some seemingly distant historical period, but much closer to home (for some of us). The location was EVE Online—a science-fiction-based MMORPG, and the bank was the Eve Intergalactic Bank—a privately run in-game institution that for several months convinced EVE Online players to deposit their spare "money" into accounts with the enticement of accruing several points of interest per month. That seemingly virtuous idea came to a crashing halt when the proprietor of the EIB, known to the game universe as "Cally," absconded with around 790 billion ISK-the currency of the EVE Online world.

EIB was supposed to function much as a real bank would, turning its assets into investment capital, then using the returns to pay interest to bank clients and provide a tidy profit to the bank itself. Instead, it functioned more like a 1980s-era savings and loan, with no FSLIC to protect the clients.