[Devitt]

[Introduction]

This is a completely original scam for wow, I don't think I've seen anything like it on the forum so far....

I've been looking through the scamming forum for a while (although I haven't scammed anyone in WoW, I do find most of the threads entertaining and informative) and I was thinking of various ways to convert real life scams in to a WoW friendly format. Then all of a sudden something clicked, the gears started turning and an idea popped out of my head. An idea worth taking the risk of mass possible 'repost' & 'won't work n00b' spam.

Me and 2 friends had started to farm a n00b inst for some stupid drops, when one friend had to drop out for some uninteresting and ilrelevant reason. Because my HS still had 15 minute CD left, my 2nd friend agreed to wait with me untill it popped.

5 minites of nothing and idle chatter later, I came up with the idea of gambling on /rolls. We did this for 10 minutes, blah blah blah, etc....

Which brings me to.....


[The Scam]

This is loosely based on the RL old school classic: 'Three Card Monte' Scam (google ftw).

What you need:

*At least 2 'Shrills' (3 would be better, read on to find out why )
*Some cold hard cash
*1 'Mark'
(See Glossary at the bottom if you are unsure of what these terms mean)

What to do:

1:Create a party with you and 2/3 of the shrills.

2: Advertise the fact you want to gamble on rolls eg. "LFM People to Gamble on /roll /w me if you are intrested."

3: The clueless mark will /w you with an intrest. Make sure you specify a minimum stake; you want rich people, so set it quite high (20-50G?) but not too high, as you want a few rounds before you go for the big score .

4: Invite your final shrill to the group (but let a few minutes pass).

5: Initiate conversation regarding how you will deal with payment to the winners. Mention that it would be a good idea for one 'trustworthy' person to be designated to hold on to the cash, so that no one tries to pull a fast one (Oh the irony).

6: Nominate the 3rd shrill as this 'trustworthy' person.

7: Play as many rounds (on low cash) as you feel necessary. Make sure the mark wins atleast one of them and PAY THEM.

8: Now for the fun part. Decide to up the ante, make it something like 500G-1KG (Or higher if you have big balls). Definitly start high then bargain downwards. Once the mark agrees on a high stake then you are good to go.

9: This bit should be obvious now. Transfer the cash to the 'trustworthy' person and alll /roll.

10: If he loses then the winner (after a suitable pause) says "Cheers, w00t 3k" or whatever. Then rinse and repeat untill he wins one. If he wins, you all: leave party/log off/whisper him with "Lawl n00b j00 got sc4mm3d!!".

11: Share the cash and buy mass greys from AH (or whatever takes your fancy)


[Notes]

*Make sure you all act as if you don't know each other!!!! IMPORTANT!!!

*Act natural!!

*When nominating a 'trustworthy' person, it is worth saying that "MMOwned1337 is alright, I've seen him around a lot" or something similar.

*The beauty of this scam is that it's a win win for all members (except the mark). If you pull out before he wins, then he won't know he has even been scammed (and technically he hasn't).

*Odds are 3/4 3/5 (dependant on size of the group) that the group will win anyway.

*Although you will need high level characters to do this in order to be taken seriously, I would advise against using your main accounts on pure common sense grounds.

*You could scale it down if you are a lower level, but expect obviously lower yields.

*Recommended for experienced or intelligent scammers


[Glossary of terms]

"Shrill" = Person acting as member of the public who is infact in on the scam.
"Mark" = Your scamming target.

Congratulations! You now know some real scamming terminology!
(Don't mean to be patronising, but I haven't seen these terms used at all. This is a scamming community isn't it? lol)


[End]

Thank you for reading.. I hope this is original (for WoW at least.. 3CM has been around for a good 100 years at least)

Constuctive criticism very much welcomed.

If this infact a repost, then could you let the Mods deal with it and not mass spam teh thread please.

[edit] Tidy up and minor spelling fixes [edit2] Changed some colours & Layout.

[Devitt]

[Anti Ban]

Just thought of these:

*Play your parts well, actually pass the gold to the 'trustworthy' person for each roll so it shows up in Blizzard's logs for future referance.

*On the assumption that Blizzard doesn't log /rolls, on the final roll assign someone to pretend that they've won (for benefit of chat logs) and have the gold passed to them before you quit the party.

*If all goes well, then even if the mark complains, the investigation (chat and trade logs) will make it look like the mark is just an incredibly bad loser and may even get a warning themselves.

*Do not discuss the scam in game, make all preparations on an IM program or Vent or something simmilar (Common sense, sorry).

*If you are extra paranoid, have the pretend winner hold on to the cash for a few days before you split it. That way you can assess whether you've got away with it (you should anyway).

Please leave a comment if you are reading this, even if you think it sucks, feedback would be nice.

[edit] More!!

*Also the issue of sharing the gold.. just thought that after the party kick, another few rounds of rolls to share the gold should work (obviously making sure you drop a mention in party chat for the logs)

The scam could be also be pulled off without having to actually scam the mark (don't flame me yet, let me explain )

If you think, you have a group of 4 working together.. thats a good 80% chance of winning anyway and the mark has no chance of finding that out.

Say you have a 1000G stake, you have that 80% chance of a win. Win once and kick from party and invite next one. Pull the actual scam on the times that you lose and then you have an average of 80% 'satisfied customers' (Satisfied to the point that they haven't been scammed).

If Blizzard was to then investigate, those 80% non-scammed peeps should hopefully help to prove that the mark was just a cry baby and a bad loser.

[Mea.Culpa]

hmm.. I think the Ban rate still will be very high... Tell me on witch server you play... we will try maybe this is good: Do the rolling... If u lose say this: W00T I won! ( he will say the same ) and start being very happy in chat :P blizz will think u won... he will say.. no I won and you just keep convincing blizz that you won... say that he is scammer and that you are going to report him... dont ofcource :P he will report you and blizz wil prolly think he is trying 2 scam bliz XD you sell sum shit on AH and the trustguy buys it xD ( gray item ) so u split teh money ( If u win... gz :P )

Ellusionist

[Devitt]

First off, thank you for the reply!!

I personally feel that if done correctly the ban rate would be very low.

I think calling the mark a scammer would be coming on too stong. Saying something along the lines of "Dude, 54 doesn't beat 57, L2Count" then a swift kick from the party would do fine.

Also the issue of sharing the gold.. just thought that after the party kick, another few rounds of rolls to share the gold should work (obviously making sure you drop a mention in party chat for the logs)

And about trying it out with you... well I won't have access to WoW for another week :'( But if people still care about this scam then, I'd be up for tryin it out.

[frkshlyweird832]

A better way to do this scam would be for the 'shrills' to make a trial accounts and you use a real one (maybe one not enabled with bc so you'll only lose $20 if you get banned).

Have your two friends make their names seem like they're banks (Bobsbank, Marksbank).

Your Mark should never try to trade with the trial accounts and you should be the only one dealing with money (trial accounts can't trade).

You still have to get some money on your account first to give to the marks once he wins a small bet though, maybe scam some? hehe

Fairly good scam though +rep

[Devitt]

Very good points there, although I think making trial accounts would scream "Scam" to me personally, also being that trial accounts can't trade, that wouldn't satisfy the logs. Scammed accounts would rectify this but would obviously heat up the situation a hell of a lot more.

My brain just popped out another one though!

The scam could be also be pulled off without having to actually scam the mark (don't flame me yet, let me explain )

If you think, you have a group of 4 working together.. thats a good 80% chance of winning anyway and the mark has no chance of finding that out. If you are willing to pay the mark on a large win then you still have a good chance of a profit (although you don't have to).

Say you have a 1000G stake, you have that 80% chance of a win. Win once and kick from party and invite next one. Pull the actual scam on the times that you lose and then you have an average of 80% 'satisfied customers' (Satisfied to the point that they haven't been scammed).

If Blizzard was to then investigate, those 80% non-scammed peeps should hopefully help to prove that the mark was just a cry baby and a bad loser.

( And Kudos on the use of the word 'shrill', first I've seen on this forum )

[edit] Just realised my maths is slightly flawed.. oops.. You DO need to scam for this to be profitable, otherwise you are just gambling.
5/5 games 1000G each stake = 4/5 to the group = 4000G total profit... 1/5 to the mark = 4000G loss... so that makes evens.
So obviously you scam on the 1/5 to make it from evens to 5000G profit (1250G each... not bad for probably 10-15 mins work)

[Mea.Culpa]

hehe :P This is a good scam great work on it are u US or EU? :P

oh and on really really dumbass peeps: /roll 83 100 :P

[Devitt]

Originally Posted by ellusionist

oh and on really really dumbass peeps: /roll 83 100 :P

Lol, that'd be an annoy+1 move!
But since (I assume) rolls aren't logged it'd be a funny possibility.

Mark rolls 87
Scammer rolls 88 (88-88)

[Devitt]

Is this really that bad? Lots of reads but hardly any replies? A completely new and original scam for WoW getting beaten around the head by numerous reposts?

[stevo250592]

I think this is a good idea to scam this in wow keep it up dude +rep!

[Devitt]

Cheers dude, much appreciated

[Mea.Culpa]

Its a great one but i think 2 many posts are made that are about gambling scams :P not same info just same name xD

[-=Demon=-]

Looks like someone has watched too much of 'The Real Hussle'
Nice Idea.

[airik700]

Gambling would be risky business.

There was a point pre-bc where people were running their own /roll gambling toons in main cities (IF/Org) etc.

Blizzard eventually took action, and it was a reportable offense.

If you spammed in trade saying LFM /roll gambling, some old veteran wow player may report you, and it'll fall apart early on.

But good luck with w/e.

[Devitt]

Originally Posted by airik700

Gambling would be risky business.

There was a point pre-bc where people were running their own /roll gambling toons in main cities (IF/Org) etc.

Blizzard eventually took action, and it was a reportable offense.

If you spammed in trade saying LFM /roll gambling, some old veteran wow player may report you, and it'll fall apart early on.

But good luck with w/e.

Cheers for the info, will have to have a look through the ol' terms and check this out.
Still seems a good idea though, since tbh you'd have to be pathetic to report for that and hopefully the veterans have grown up now.