ยทevent MAJOR
Phaser Inc. Ponzi - 1 Trillion ISK Investment Scam
On 12 August 2011, Phaser Inc. - an in-game investment "bank" run by Eddie Lampert and Mordor Exuel that promised 5% weekly returns - closed all 3,360 accounts and walked off with ~1.033 trillion ISK (~$50,000), then the largest scam in EVE history.
Phaser Inc. Ponzi - 1 Trillion ISK Investment Scam
On 12 August 2011, capsuleers Eddie Lampert and Mordor Exuel pulled the plug on Phaser Inc., an in-game "investment bank" they had been running for roughly eight months out of Jita and the major trade hubs. They closed all 3,360 active investor accounts and walked away with ~1.033 trillion ISK - roughly USD $50,000 in PLEX-equivalent value - at the time the largest single scam in EVE Online's recorded history.
The pitch was simple and absurd: a guaranteed 5% weekly return on any ISK deposited, supposedly generated by a board of directors, traders, and undisclosed corporate holdings. None of that infrastructure existed. As Mordor Exuel later told EVE News 24, "It was a 100% pure meant to be Ponzi scheme, right from the start." Early withdrawals were paid out of new deposits in the textbook Ponzi pattern, generating word-of-mouth credibility that pulled in more victims - Phaser Inc. processed over 800 withdrawal requests, answered ~6,000 in-game emails, and made roughly 15,000 interest payouts before the wind-down. CCP's own write-up - published on the New Eden News portal under the deliberately wry headline Ponzi Scheme a Success - confirmed the figures and reminded players that running an investment scam inside the game does not violate the EULA.
The take dwarfed the previous record set by Bad Bobby's Titans4U heist eleven months earlier, and it sat at the top of the EVE-scam leaderboard for six years until The Judge cleaned out Circle of Two in September 2017. Unlike the EBANK / Ricdic embezzlement two years earlier - which broke the EULA because Ricdic cashed ISK out for real money to pay medical bills - Phaser Inc. stayed entirely in-game: no real-money trading, no bans, no CCP intervention. Lampert and Exuel kept their accounts and their ISK, split the profits 500B/500B, and (per their own account) received mostly congratulatory mail from the very players they had fleeced.
The Phaser Inc. Ponzi went on to receive a Guinness World Record entry for "Most successful Ponzi scheme in EVE Online" and remains the canonical example of why "guaranteed weekly returns" advertisements in Jita local are always - always - a scam. For returning players: any in-game investment opportunity that promises double-digit weekly yields and points at a flashy external website is following the Phaser Inc. playbook by the letter. Trust no bank you cannot wardec.