Russian Criminals are money laundering in TF2

[Ps360]

Today I discovered that there are tons of Keys with doubtful origin injecting into the market | SteamRep Forums
11/11 key injection and economy manipulation : tf2

Here are the conclusions from the suspicious group.
We all know that Mann Co Package is grant for every USD$20 of purchase from Store. They had 14-17 Packages, so they "spent" USD$280-$340 on Keys using each account.
All the involved accounts in this group were created at least months ago.
The accounts were Free-to-Play (Per my replication of Valve's database in May 23, 2012)
No weapons/hats stayed in these backpacks.
They sometimes open the Mann Co Packages or just give them away to Buds sellers.
Usually no Keys/Buds were left behind.
The proven accounts NEVER signed in at TF2 Outpost. However, they do look for Buds sellers there.
They refer each other to the largest Buds sellers on Outpost
So it is reasonable to believe that this is a group that is worthy of our attention.
From the script I made, the Group
-Has 65 Members
--Of which 30 has Public Backpacks
---Of which 23 are Premium
----Of which 6 has Keys left
-----Of which 6 has Mann Co Packages left
---Of which 7 are Free-to-Play
--Of which 35 has Private Backpacks
You can imagine the impact of this group if they inject thousands of Keys into the market every week by suspicious means.

tl;dr A group of Russians bought >5,000 Keys from Store today using illegitimate credit cards and bought few hundred Buds from TF2 Outpost at an ridiculous price of 28-30 Keys (The average yesterday was 25.5 Keys). They have been doing this for quite a long time and their activity today is alarming.

Some graphs:

http://i.imgur.com/8k2m3.png
http://i.imgur.com/0Ea8q.png


it's always the fucking russians.



Too bad no one wants to trade with russians because it always raises a red flag due to most of them being scamming scumbags.





Quite amazing that valve made a economy that not only is bigger than the Greece economy, is apparently used by Criminals now to get money.




I Also wonder if FBI/CIA Has some special room in the office dedicated to shit like this, just learning the TF2 Economy for a living to track down major russian criminals.

[dr_mayus]

Way to go Valve, you just gave the government another reason to go after gaming. Maybe keep a closer eye on your stuff so it isn't used for criminal conspiracy.

[Ps360]

Way to go Valve, you just gave the government another reason to go after gaming. Maybe keep a closer eye on your stuff so it isn't used for criminal conspiracy.

pro tip eve online is worse

keeping paid in-game currency as a item instead of a number in your wallet, someone can simply destroy thousands of dollars by blowing up your ship.

[dr_mayus]

pro tip eve online is worse

keeping paid in-game currency as a item instead of a number in your wallet, someone can simply destroy thousands of dollars by blowing up your ship.

That isn't a pro-tip, you just admitted that Valve fucked up, just that they aren't fucking up as bad as another company.

Keep trying Troll, you will get the hang of it eventually

[KingLazy]

Welp, that explains that russian text I was getting. Didn't bothered translating and I think I could have been scammed there.

[nevetsteven2]

Steam has russian criminals = not good.

I used to use steam a rong time ago.