The Biggest EVE Scam of All Time

Just finished reading 1337's article "EVE Online Scams and How to Avoid Them". Great article but when I finished reading it I couldn't believe that one scam was totally forgotten. It's not like you forgot about people who offer bookmarks to locations that don't exist, or use a "trustworthy" third party to make some weird transaction. The scam that was overlooked is easily and undoubtedly the biggest, most prevalent, and most costly scam going on in the EVE gaming community of all time.

Contract Scams

So there I am, on my way to Jita with a cargo hold full of Alloyed Trit Bars coming from Yarebap. I was pretty stoked because the trit bars were enough that I could turn around and sell them for enough money to buy the two faction armor hardeners I wanted for my Amarr Assault Frig. Sirppala, three jumps to go, I was getting excited, thinking about missions I would more easily take down, or even contemplating some PVP (Player Versus Player) action that I would have more fun with. Urlen, two jumps to go. Was pretty amazed to see how much the gates just seemed to pop as more and more people crowded through them on their way to the largest market in all of the verse. One jump away in Permieter I noticed how much my local chat box was blinking so I opened it to see 124 people sitting in local with the largest concentration being at the gate to Jita itself. I punched through the gate and was nothing less than blown away by what I saw.

The local chat was scrolling insanely as 946 people climbed in and out of system. It was impossible to keep up with the sheer number of people advertising the items they were selling. Then my eyes nearly popped out of my head when I saw it. 2 faction, Amarr Navy Shield Hardeners in orange letters , both for only 22million. I clicked on the contract and was about to accept it when something caught my eye. There were too many zeros in the price. It was 22 billion, not 22 million.

Not fully realizing what I had almost done, I messaged the seller, paid the charges and told him that he had made a mistake on the pricing. My response back? "Wow, you are a total nub aren't you." With that he left the chat and began spamming the local chat again, intentionally lying to people, hoping someone would fall for it and give him the rip off price he was asking for.

I started looking at the contracts in local and realized that easily, 8 out of 10 (and that's me being generous) were total rip offs. People pricing items wrong, declaring one item is another (IE, naming the contract Amarr Navy Issue Apocalypse and selling a standard Apoc), or claiming an item is rare and it's the lowest price in the system.