That's fair, and I appreciate the response. You are missing my point as it relates to the sale of the Fungi Stick, though. We know -- or can prove with minimal effort -- that Richgirl is/was Plat Lord. We know that the forum account that just sold a Fungi Staff belongs to Richgirl. Therefore, even if the sale of the Fungi was legitimate, we know that it was carried out by a habitual RMT'er that should rightfully have any and every account banned. It doesn't seem reasonable to require new evidence of RMT to ban each and every one of his accounts. You know he sells platinum in massive quantities; you know he just brought in 800k (or handed away a pre-nerf Fungi Staff). That really should be enough. This isn't a court of law, and so I don't agree that incontrovertible evidence should be the evidentiary standard.
I believe you when you say that you want to eliminate RMT. I also believe you when you say it's not your #1 priority, and that you write queries to identify RMT'ers. But I think that's why you're missing the boat on the egregious RMT'ers. Queries aren't going to solve this problem. It's got to be a more personal approach. You know the RMT website. You know the major players. And you're smart enough to know when character liquidations sound suspect. Queries and coding might not tell you that Szeth/Cyrano are acting suspiciously. But any regular on the server can tell you what's up. Even if you aren't capable of identifying Plat Lord via IP or query, knocking 800k out of his coffers is going to seriously discourage his RMT activity. At a very conservative $1 per 1k rate, that's $800. RMT isn't profitable enough for people to sustain those kinds of losses. Make it even mildly difficult on him and he'll fold.
The type of rock solid evidence you're waiting on just isn't going to materialize in the vast majority of cases. The only people with screenshots, logs, and PayPal info are the parties involved in the deal. In the case of Szeth, he didn't mind providing the info because he's done here. With repeat RMT'ers, they're running a business -- they're not going to quit and hand over logs. And the buyers want to keep their plat, so they're not going to report it, either. You've got to have someone doing some relatively simple detective work if you really want to stem RMT. Keep an eye on the massive amounts of platinum being accumulated by quitting raiders. If it ends up in a bank on that account, fine. If it ends up getting transferred in bulk to different accounts and different IPs, ask some questions and ban people. It might not be 100% fool proof, but it's better than what we've got. In the grand scheme of things, a few false positives would be much better for the server's health than allowing millions of plat to be RMT'd on a monthly basis.
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