White-collar crime hits role-playing game EVE Online

Normally, if bankers make off with all the money that clients have entrusted to them and mysteriously skip town, there's outrage, an FTC investigation, and a nasty jail sentence involved. If they get away with the crime and no authority's doing anything about it, it must be the plot of a "Deadwood" episode, right?

Not this time. The setting here isn't the Old West, but rather a place that some would argue is equally lawless: an online role-playing game. This nasty bank scandal involves not real currency, but the virtual money of the Reikjavik, Iceland-based science-fiction game EVE Online. Recently, an EVE bank owner by the name of "Cally" made off with 790 billion ISK (EVE's currency) that other players had deposited in his establishment with the hope of earning some interest.

EVE players, especially those who lost money in the process, are naturally furious. But there are no real-world laws to govern virtual treachery, and thus far, the powers that be at EVE Online haven't taken action against Cally.

Will the uproar mean that offline legal systems might start taking online crooks seriously? The jury's still out.