Somber Industries Response To Iskbank.com Scandal

On Saturday Massively.com's Eve Online columnist Brendan Drain published an interview with SOMBER.blink's Somerset Mahm about the site.  Since the interview was conducted before Brendan knew about the latest revelations about the Iskbank.com RMT scandal broken by Eve News24, he arranged for Somerset Mahm to address the issue in the comments.

"Re: the RMT issues that have recently cropped up. Blink takes an active stance on trying to combat RMT. We don't allow you to cash out Blink credit (the easiest way to quickly launder ISK), you have to play your credit on the site. We also don't allow transfer of credit between accounts-- even though this feature has been requested and we'd love to implement it. We are, from what I understand, audited fairly closely by CCP because of the sheer amount of ISK that runs through Blink. Because ISK goes into Blink and back out to the same person, not a different player, this immediately defeats much of the potential for laundering-- the transactions are still linked to the player that was holding the bought ISK to begin with.

"I filed petitions as soon as the recent events came to light, and did receive GM responses although they could not confirm what actions will be taken. Several accounts will be removed from the site as it does appear that they have been permanently banned. [emphasis mine]

"At the most pragmatic level, however, there is little we can do other than cooperate fully with CCP. We receive no special insight as to the source of ISK and we have no CCP-Batphone to use. Rest assured that we're 100% against the practice of RMT, as it kills the game we love."

So it appears that CCP is going through the copy of the database that Eve News24 provided the makers of my favorite game and are applying the Banhammer.