There have been a few interesting reports from Australia over the last number of days.

First it has been reported in the UK Register that a 27 year old tech worker, who was the head of a bank in the MMORPG Eve Online stole 200 Billion ISK or “Interstellar Kredits” in deposits from other players. He then converted the ISK to real dollars on auction sites netting a windfall of about AUS$6,000 or US$5,000.

The amounts are not large, the damage to each individual player likely small, it may be against Eve Online’s TOS to sell currency outside of the game and it may be part of Eve Online’s gaming culture to have these kinds of scandals, but that does not mean that the individual did not convert the assets owned by someone else for his own benefit. It appears that the inspiration for the theft was his real world financial problems as opposed to simply trying to earn notoriety within the game.

In other happenings the financial intelligence agency of Australia, AUSTRAC has published its “Typologies and Case Studies Report 2009″.

In these reports the fun reading is in the case studies and this document is no exception. The report includes four cases that involve the use of the Internet to facilitate some aspect of a financial crime such as solicitation, conversion, etc. I won’t give the stories away as the case studies are published on line. Thanks to Mr. Gupta for forwarding this article on the subject.