Prometheus 6

When is lying illegal?

...Last, week, Dentara Rast -- a character in CCP's Eve Online massively multiplayer online world -- pulled off an impressive stunt. He ran a classic Ponzi scheme and walked off with 700 billion ISK (in game money, and quite a lot of it). Normally, this kind of in-game bravado would generate nothing but a confuse stare from someone not deep inside the Eve universe, and little more than scandal-of-the-week titillation and subsequent yawns there. But I believe this case is more interesting than that.

I believe Dentara Rast committed fraud.
I believe he owes the IRS a lot of money.

Admittedly these are bold statements likely stuffed with straw, but they have deep implications, and bear argument.

Which would be absolutely absurd, except...

Eve ISK is a fungible asset. While no regulated market exists for converting ISK into cash directly, there are markets available. CCP sells 30 day time cards for 120 million ISK. Time cards are available legally for $14 a piece. So the implied value of an ISK is roughly $1.17E-07. Put another way, that 700 billion ISK is worth 5,834 time cards, or $81,667.