No, the scammer asked to trade things privately via pm. But never kept his end of the bargain (going 2nd each time, therefore ending up with about 5 codes from seperate people).

Then, he came back with 2-3 (maybe more) new accounts with the same purpose of "trading".

Wow, what a prick.

(It's criminal fraud, if anybody wants to call the coppers ;-) )

http://www.gog.com/en/forum/general/classifieds/post3472

http://www.gog.com/en/forum/general/classifieds/post3473

http://www.gog.com/en/forum/general/classifieds/post3495

Im not sure how much attention GOG puts on it, but in the PM with the "bad apples" there is a button - top right "Contact Options" where you can select "Block and Report"

Not sure what Report does but if everyone does it to the same *people* then surely GOG should take some action?

Hmm. Actually, I think it's GOG who are (mostly) powerless to stop scammers. There is no way to reliably check one's identity on the Internet. A scammer _can_ create a multitude of accounts in a way that is pretty hard to detect, it just depends on the effort he's willing to put into it.

My suggestion would be to:

a) trade with people whom you trust, or who have a good standing in the community

b) when trading with unknown people, take a custodian who takes both codes that are being traded, checks their validity, and then sends them to the respective recipients

I don't think GOG can do _that_ much. Trading of codes isn't even something that's part of GOG's services, it's just something that people happen to do here.

Alas, you will not catch the guy, unless they're some idiot kid in the EU. More likely they're out of our reach. However this is not a hard problem to solve. As I said, the solution lies in escrow. I'll put together something next weekend (we're releasing a new version at work at the moment, so I have little time). Basically we need something like steam has that can validate both codes are valid, and then each user can agree to the trade.

A potential issue is that I don't think that Wakalo actually broke the forum terms of use. Well, his swearing did, even if it was in Portugese, but there's nothing in the TOU that prohibits lying to con other users into gifting you games. As for whether any of his actions were fraudulent (in the sense of meeting the legal test for fraud), there's no way to know without knowing what jurisdiction's laws apply to the GOG forums. Which is a little more research than I'm prepared to do right now. :p

I'm not saying nothing can/should be done, I'm just saying it might not be as simple as just permabanning his IP.

No-one doubts that. We're just now discussing it. That's what forums are for :).

That's true. I'm lucky to have had no trades go wrong during my time here. But at the very least, this latest scammer guy can maybe wise up the community here that we cannot trust everyone just because it's the GOG forums.

yes they are, and the sensible conversation that i am reading, is another reason why i love this place :D

just introduce minimal reputation to your giveaways. It's not fair, but it's the only way to filter out this kind of people.

I only recently heard about this scammer, and I wholeheartedly agree with Ian that something needs to be done about this. It'd be an awful shame to see such a nice and trustworthy community slowly become more and more cynical because of a few idiots. If this sort of thing continues, soon people will begin to distrust any new member who joins the forums, and that's not exactly the sort of welcoming image I'd like to give to an innocent newbie.

I remember when I first started posting here, I was surprised by how kind, generous and welcoming the community was (not to mention mature and well-behaved) compared to the majority of the internet. I don't post on forums a lot, but this was one of the reasons I stuck around and met some truly amazing people as a result. I sincerely hope that this place will always remain that way.

Therefore I hope that this scammer doesn't manage to sow a seed of discord among the community when it comes to the way we behave towards newer members :(.

The larger the community gets, the more idiots will slip in. It's a shame, but it's inevitable.

Yes, may be the only way. Do you have a suggested level ?