Official News page 6

CRIME OF THE CENTURY FOILED BY FRAUD SQUAD

by Hazed

An audacious plan to hijack a new planet and divert its revenues to an existing planet owner has been foiled by a crack team of investigators from the fraud squad.

New star system Pyra, with its cryptically-named planet Bx1, was added to the hyperspace link network on Thursday, much to the excitement of its owner who had discovered the system and developed the planet until it was in a fit state to be accepted by the Galactic Trading Guild, Inc as an agricultural world.

But when Novemix logged on, expecting that his promotion to Founder would be activated and that he could start to play with his brand new economy, he was shocked to discover that he was still a Financier and had not been given to the keys to the new planet and system. A quick check of the planet's details showed why: he didn't own it. Instead, another player's name had been put on the system's title deeds. That unexpected imposter was Munabilo.

In a dastardly plot, he had subverted staff at the Galactic Trading Guild to have his name attached to the planet instead of the real owner's name - despite already being the owner of a system of his own. He thus hoped to siphon off the profits of the new economy in order to fund a lavish lifestyle of luxury.

How he hoped to get away with this blatant act of identity theft, we will never know, because the alarm was raised almost as soon as the planet appeared on exchange listings. Investigators from the Galactic Administration's fraud squad were called in, and actually had to do very little investigation to find the culprit - his name was right there, on the planet. It took a little more effort to root out his accomplices who had helped him with the hijack, but by yesterday, the planet's keys had been return to a grateful and tearful Novemix, who can now ensure that the planet's profits go into the right bank balance.

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