Actual Man Actually Convicted by Actual Court for Virtual Land Scam

The long arm of the real law reached out for him last year and now finally issues a conviction in Indiana:

After pleading guilty to theft as a class D felony in a Marion County court, Joshua Bills was sentenced late last month to three years of probation after paying full restitution of $53,500 to the victim. “This was certainly a unique case in that it dealt with online, virtual real estate,” Indiana Securities Commissioner Alex Glass said in a statement. “However, upon examination of the facts, this case is very similar to a conventional real estate investment scheme. Con artists are always finding new and unique ways to scam trusting individuals out of their hard earned money.

I'm not a lawyer (but I play one in an off-off-Broadway production of Inherit the Wind), but seems like this conviction helps establish a legal precedent for future prosecution of other virtual scams. It's interesting that Commissioner Glass is citing real estate regulation in a situation which actually, only involves licensed, designated access to a server network actually owned by Linden Lab.

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Comments

[Iggy]

The scam must have been for private-estate land.

I logged in yesterday for the first time in a while to attend an educators' meeting. Everywhere around my little 512 on the Mainland is abandoned. A sim adjacent had nothing at all on it. Took a look around several nearby sims and it was all ghost town.

I don't think you find a buyer for a sim on the mainland for $53.

[Shockwave yareach]

If there is real money stolen then the real law should be involved.

[jack]

Sounds great. Now maybe the author of this blog, and other "journalists" will be liable for promoting the scam that is SL when the class action suit gets to the next round?

[jjccc]

Are aware that in a resent crack down linden labs have banned large numbers of avatars in addition voice has been turned off at a large number of sims is this the way they intend to run sansar with an iron fist