The guy who runs Ebank, the virtual bank in the multiplayer game Eve Online, has defrauded his own bank, has been barred from the game, and is on the run. The bank is now trying to recover from a run on its deposits by panicky ”customers”.

There are several things about this tale that fascinate, but here are two: First, the guy who set up the bank is an ordinary user, and the bank itself isn’t a special feature of the game – it’s just an organization that any user can set up.

Because players often do not have the interstellar credits — abbreviated to ISK, also the official abbreviation of the Icelandic kroner — they need to expand their fleets, an enterprising player created a bank that would accept deposits and lend to players who would pledge assets, like their spacecraft, as collateral.

The bank was a success. According to its Web site (yes, it has one), Ebank accumulated about 8.9 trillion ISK in deposits in 13,000 accounts belonging to 6,000 users.

Second, he made real money – hard currency – from the fraud. Since his bank had way more deposits than loans outstanding,

… he made off with deposits, which he then sold for real cash to gamers on a sort of black-market exchange separate from Eve.