Jagex moderator fired for stealing 45 billion coins from Old School Runescape player - RuneScape is serious buisness

Nick Gars

"that" guy
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https://www.pcgamer.com/jagex-moder...llion-coins-from-old-school-runescape-player/

In total, over 100 billion gold may have been stolen. Jagex is now working with the police given the gold's real-world value.


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Update: Jagex has issued a statement saying that no credit card or banking information was lost as a result of the breach.

"Further to yesterday’s announcement, we can confirm that none of our players’ bank or card details were compromised," it said. "We work with an industry-respected, fully compliant third-party payment processor, to purposefully avoid staff having access to players’ full bank or card details. This also applies when players choose to save their details at payment stage for any future purchases. Jagex undergoes regular, third-party testing to ensure we maintain the highest security standards."

Original story:

A couple of months ago, an Old School Runescape player who goes by mazrim_lol on Reddit claimed that a "serious data breach" had caused him to lose 45 billion coins on his main account. His claims were dismissed by a number of other players, several of whom suggested that it was his own fault for not having the account properly secured, or that he might be lying about it completely. But it came to light today that he wasn't lying, and that he was correct about the data breach, which was actually an inside job at Jagex.

"We confirm that a Member of The Old School Team was dismissed from employment at Jagex following gross misuse of moderator privileges," Jagex said in an announcement posted today. "During our rigorous routine system checks, irregular activity was identified on small number of accounts, including the movement of wealth and items back into the live game."

"Following our investigation, we were able to resolve the issue before any significant impact was made to the wider game, or economy. We have also taken steps to return items and GP to any affected accounts. Whilst we generally do not return items or gold, we feel that given this unusual situation, we wanted to ensure no players lost out to the rogue actions of a member of staff."

Jagex added that it's "working with the police" regarding the incident—45 billion coins has considerable real-world value—but said it could not provide further details. However, according to this Resetera thread the employee in question is Jed Sanderson, aka Mod Jed, who may actually have stolen in excess of 100 billion coins in total, worth over $100,000 on gold-selling markets. He's also allegedly involved with the Reign of Terror clan, which has been accused of using DDoS attacks to impede opponents in tournaments, including a $20,000 tournament that took place in September of last year. Jagex said at the time that its investigation had found no evidence of wrongdoing by Sanderson, but in the wake of all this I expect that it will be taking another look.

In a follow-up post, Mazrim_lol shared an image of a message he received from Jagex Player Support, informing him that, because of the "rare circumstances" of the case, it has decided to restore his lost wealth. "We take matters like this very serious and, as such, we would like to assure you that we have taken steps to make sure that an incident like this will not happen again," Jagex wrote.

Happily, Mazrim_lol is taking his vindication graciously: "All the redditors who spent ages telling me I was just lax with security can suck a fat one," he wrote

Dunno if this really qualifies as a happening, but this gave me one hell of a laugh.
To give context, 45 billion GP is worth about 40 grand in USD.
 
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That's wild. Considering the amounts of money involved and methods, this guy is probably facing a decade in Federal prison.

Also, why do all these media companies use Resetera as a source?
it depends, Jagex is based in the UK, not the US. one would have to go looking at any UK precedent or laws applicable with this, and even still, find out what country this Moderator was based in which could make things even more sticky.
 
it depends, Jagex is based in the UK, not the US. one would have to go looking at any UK precedent or laws applicable with this, and even still, find out what country this Moderator was based in which could make things even more sticky.

True, but the fun thing about the global financial system is that if you are using US Dollars, at some point it got routed through the US in some way. When it comes to global finance...

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But yeah, the UK can probably handle this.
 
it depends, Jagex is based in the UK, not the US. one would have to go looking at any UK precedent or laws applicable with this, and even still, find out what country this Moderator was based in which could make things even more sticky.

Mod Jed is English, that we know. The UK has anti hacking laws that fall under the Computer Misuse Act of 1990.
Penalties for offences under CMA 1990 range from two years’ imprisonment and/or a fine for unauthorised access to computer material; up to five years and/or a fine for unauthorised access with intent to commit or facilitate commission of further offences; up to 10 years and/or a fine for unauthorised modification of computer material; and imprisonment for life and/or a fine for breach of s 3ZA.
We don't know the true scope publicly, but what we do know is that there were multiple accounts accessed on separate occasions, so there is a good chance that he would be charged with a single count for each occasion unless there's some kind of plea agreement. Considering that just the unauthorized access itself is punishable by 2 years in prison, it could add up.
 
My question tho is how the fuck he gathered 45B worth of GP?
 
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My question tho is how the fuck he gathered 45B worth of GP?

I'm just confused as to how Runescape money has real world value. I didn't even think it was popular enough to worth stealing Runescape money.

And even if he tried to sell it, what guy is like "yeah I'll take that 45B worth of Runescape money off your hands for like.... 25 grand"
 
I'm just confused as to how Runescape money has real world value. I didn't even think it was popular enough to worth stealing Runescape money.

And even if he tried to sell it, what guy is like "yeah I'll take that 45B worth of Runescape money off your hands for like.... 25 grand"

I used to be HUGE RS player back in the day, when the gold farming was so bad before Jagex put clamp on it...mostly.

The value comes from of how "hard" it is to gather that gold + amount of time you spent playing the game and usually it doesn't get sold in one huge bulk like that- it would go like "Yo I want to buy 10M for that price" and they steadily pawn it off over the time. 45B would take you forever to sell unless you got lucky or sold it for super cheap.

(Fun fact, the gold buying and selling was SUPER CHEAP back then because bots was on rampage back then. Someone can set up like 10 accounts and leave it running chopping wood, gathering herbs such and made easy bank off it). Now it's 99 percent real players just sitting there doing thing as bots back then.)

P.S- OSRS's gold has more value than RS3's gold. If I remember correctly, its around 10M Rs3 GP for 1m OSRS GP
 
I used to be HUGE RS player back in the day, when the gold farming was so bad before Jagex put clamp on it...mostly.

The value comes from of how "hard" it is to gather that gold + amount of time you spent playing the game and usually it doesn't get sold in one huge bulk like that- it would go like "Yo I want to buy 10M for that price" and they steadily pawn it off over the time. 45B would take you forever to sell unless you got lucky or sold it for super cheap.

(Fun fact, the gold buying and selling was SUPER CHEAP back then because bots was on rampage back then. Someone can set up like 10 accounts and leave it running chopping wood, gathering herbs such and made easy bank off it). Now it's 99 percent real players just sitting there doing thing as bots back then.)

P.S- OSRS's gold has more value than RS3's gold. If I remember correctly, its around 10M Rs3 GP for 1m OSRS GP

Yeah but.... who even cares enough about Runescape to buy gold? That's like me buying counterfeit Monopoly money to tuck into my sleeve next time theres a board game.
 
Yeah but.... who even cares enough about Runescape to buy gold? That's like me buying counterfeit Monopoly money to tuck into my sleeve next time theres a board game.

Hardcore players I guess.
 
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Yeah but.... who even cares enough about Runescape to buy gold? That's like me buying counterfeit Monopoly money to tuck into my sleeve next time theres a board game.

Every single MMO has a market for buying in game money with real money. As @A Psycho Cat said earlier, it just comes down to how hard the money is to get vs paying actual cash for it. If this was back around 2004-2006, it would be worth much more. Around 2007 (the current version of OSRS), money became very easy to earn in game.
 
Yeah but.... who even cares enough about Runescape to buy gold? That's like me buying counterfeit Monopoly money to tuck into my sleeve next time theres a board game.

Some gear is worth 100 million so it kinda makes sense. RuneScape mobile came out and you can imagine that they'll wanna pay their way forward.

It's amazing that RS gold is still worth more than the Bolivar.
 
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