How much real-life action is too much with
Second Life investment fraud?By Xavier Mohr
SLRepports.net
An Editorial 
I received an email earlier from a friend, asking me about Jasper Tizzy's real-life information. While I did not know Jasper all that well aside from random IMs, my friend - like many of us - had made a well-researched connection that Jasper was likely Frank Corsi - formerly of Florida, now reportedly living in Indiana. I should note that this cannot be proven to my knowledge, but is a strong possibility based on all evidence available. The email indicated that we should, "... get his real life info for the community." Stop. "Hold it right there," I thought to myself. This was going a little too far for me. Those of you that know me know I am committed to transparency, honesty, and my own real life is basically an open book compared to some. I am very easy to find in real life. However this is not the case with a lot of Second Lifers. As Strange Ranger reported at Strange's Second Life Blog , if Tizzy is Frank Corsi in real life, he may have good reason to want his information to remain a secret.
However... "plain" people on the grid might require a bit of anonymity as well. Those with families, public positions in their communities, and reputations to protect in the real world would no doubt be alarmed if we passed their contact information amongst each other without knowing who was going to be doing what with it. Jasper aside, I have started thinking about real-life information and how it relates to public business in Second Life. The bottom line is that I air on the side of caution based on my own experience for a number of years working and volunteering with social platforms across the web. I guess the bullet point here is, "Let the experts handle it." If you suspect that a user has defrauded you, first contact the service provider - in our case, Linden Labs. These service providers have paid big bucks to legal counsel for development of Terms of Service (TOS) that keep them - and us - compliant with real-life laws. Should escalation to the corporate level fail, and you suspect the user in question has violated real-life laws, contact the appropriate authorities. In the case of a U.S. citizen, this might be your local/regional F.B.I. office or police department. I have seen, however, on more than one occasion where users take the matter into their own hands - 'vigilante justice' if you will. In a great majority of these cases, these users seem to end up with the legal microscope pointed back at them... while the scammer or rule-breaker in question walks away laughing. Accusations of harassment, stalking, invasion of privacy, and other serious offenses should be expected when angry users circumvent authority and pursue a party in real life. The bottom line - better safe than sorry. As for precaution against fraud, there are steps we can take and things we can do without violating the law or infringing on privacy. In Second Life specifically, with publicly-listed CEOs, one precautionary measure is easy to implement in the IPO approval process... a measure already being seen at CapEx and other exchanges. That is... making the entire IPO process a real-world business transaction in which a CEO's identity is verified and he or she is advised of legal obligations to the business that is the exchange. Ima Janitor, CEO of Riot Mechs (SLCX: MECH), underwent a U.S. credit check performed by Virtual Holdings, LLC... the real-world company that operates L&L Bank and Trust inside Second Life. It was a special measure implemented because of the large public float involved in the IPO, but one meant to lay the framework for possible real-world pursuit on a business level in the event the company disappeared with investor funds. Precautionary measures at the business level are, in my opinion, a good thing. Blindly passing out a notecard with a CEO's name, telephone number, and address to a crowd of upset investors is not. With the information obtained from CEOs, exchanges can ascertain whether or not a CEO is sick, having real-world difficulties, or truly out to scam people in the case of no contact or suspected fraud. All an investor can do is call upset -- or dare I say, 'visit' -- not knowing the situation, not knowing what other investors with the same information have done or plan to do. Limiting the number of people with access to real-life information of Second Life CEOs is a necessity. If you disagree, odds are you need to seriously rethink what you are doing inside Second Life. Remember that all of us, no matter how hard we try to push SL business closer to RL compliance, must at some point admit that Second Life is an unregulated, online entertainment platform. If we want regulated, protected investment, we need to go to the real world for it. Find a stock broker, open an IRA or savings account, sign a contract and fund a small start-up in your local area. Don't bring $50,000 USD into Second Life and get upset when you lose it and have no legal recourse for getting it back. You knew the risks when you logged in... or at least you should have! That being said, until we can get some real regulation here, all we can do is expect exchanges and businesses... at their level... to treat this as real business and take all the appropriate precautions to mitigate the risk of fraud. I'm happy that so far I have been lucky enough to be a part of businesses that have done nothing but that. Will we ever see regulation in Second Life finance and investment? Probably. We're already hearing rumors from SL's financial elite that real-world questions are being asked.... whether that's true or not is yet to be determined.
Until such a time when we have protection to fall back on, just be safe... and use a little common sense. Invest in companies that have provided real-life IDs to exchanges. Look at financial reports. Be diligent with your money in the absence of regulation. It may pay off in the end. 'Til Next Time... Xavier Mohr
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