Knowing little about the trade in mmorpg accounts, money and items, and after reading that the "virtual goods"industry in the USA alone is expected to hit $1 billion this year, I was pleased that another reviewer suggested this one. As with a lot of these sites, it turned out to be a part of a much larger Chinese network. I didn't really have all day to go looking for them, but here are the few I did find before I got bored:
First up is this one, tibiaitem.com. The Customer email address is gamekingj[at]hotmail.com and the domain registrant is named as Jun Zhou, email: mithras_ye[at]hotmail.com.
Here come some more, note the common features:
tibiamoney.com
Customer email: gamekingj[at]hotmail.com
SKYPE: mithras_ye
Registrant: Jun Zhou, email: mithras_ye[at]hotmail.com
runescape100m.com
Customer email: gamekingj[at]hotmail.com
Registrant: Jun Zhou, email: mithras_ye[at]hotmail.com
www.18min.com
Customer email: exprises[at]hotmail.com or riceswing[at]msn.com
Registrant: jun zhou, email: butterfly-*******[at]163.com
guildwarsgoldmoney.com
Customer email: exprises[at]gmail.com and gamekingj[at]hotmail.com
Registrant: James Long, mithras_ye[at]hotmail.com
gw100k.com
Customer email: exprises[at]hotmail.com
Registrant: Jun Zhou, email: mithras_ye[at]hotmail.com
enjoygolds.com
Customer email: exprises[at]hotmail.com
Registrant: liu yeqing, email: mithras_ye[at]hotmail.com
www.gamezmoney.com
Customer email: gamekingj[at]hotmail.com
Registrant: James Long, email: mithras_ye[at]hotmail.com
www.10minget.com
Customer email: gamekingj[at]hotmail.com
Registrant: James Long, email: mithras_ye[at]hotmail.com
rs15min.com
Customer email: gamekingj[at]hotmail.com
Registrant: James Long, email mithras_ye[at]hotmail.com
gameotl.com
Customer email: gameotl[at]hotmail.com
Registrant: liqing yu, email mithras[at]hotmail.com
Admin contact: jun zhou, email: mithras[at]hotmail.com (non-address)
gamegoldcoin.com
Help Desk: gameotl[at]hotmail.com
Registrant: (masked, false address, no email)
Admin contact: jun zhu, email: mithras[at]hotmail.com
runescape4u.org - closed. Contact was mithras_ye[at]hotmail.com
And at that point I decided to move along. But I had already come across a different bunch of Chinese sites, so I know there are a lot more out there. Even without getting into that, according to the domain registrars, James Long owns about 310 domains. The email address mithras_ye is associated with 96 domains.
Jun Zhou owns about 119 domains. Liqing yu owns about 4 domains. I've only scratched the surface.
I thought it especially interesting that many, if not all, of the addresses given to the domain registrars are useless - no street numbers, random postal codes. Nobody seems to have been inclined to verify that the addresses even exist. And obviously the same email addresses are floating around attached to different people.
The trade in accounts, items and gold is massive and there are endless sites out there doing much the same thing. My guess is that at least some of these are well-placed to take your money and give nothing back, and that's probably exactly what they do. I have no proof so I will say no more other than that some of these have been reported as phishing sites by others.
If you don't understand what these sites do, by the way, you don't need one. And they aren't going to tell you anyway. If you do understand, please be careful who you trade with; if possible find a few people who've had successful trades before you jump in. And bear in mind that not everyone is who they seem, especially in a virtual world.