Every game account scam we've seen — as a marketplace, on forums, in dispute
threads — is a variation of eight schemes. This page catalogs them by number
so a listing, a chat message, or a deal structure can be checked against a
specific pattern, not a vague feeling. Link to a number when warning someone;
"this is scheme #1" travels better than "sounds sketchy".
The catalog covers both directions. Four schemes target buyers, two target
sellers, two target both.
The play. The seller delivers a real account, waits weeks or months, then
files a support ticket with the publisher: original purchase receipts, the
creation email, first device data. Publishers side with the original owner —
that's what proof-of-ownership is for — and the account comes back to the
seller. The buyer keeps nothing; the seller sells it again.
Red flags. Price notably under market for the locker; seller insists on a
fast direct deal; "no email access" framed as normal (it isn't
lightweight — the
original email is the recovery lever); seller history full of the same
high-value account "back in stock".
What breaks it. Time and custody. Full access with the original email
transferred, every credential changed immediately after
delivery, and a
marketplace that holds the seller's money until the buyer confirms —
escrow doesn't stop
the recovery attempt, but it makes the scam unprofitable on the platform where
it's tried: hold periods outlast the "wait then recover" window for casual
scammers.
The play. The deal starts on a marketplace, then: "let's finish in
Discord/Telegram, you save the fee." Off the platform there is no escrow, no
dispute, no trace. Money goes first; nothing comes back.
Red flags. Any move away from where the listing lives. Fee-saving as the
stated reason. Urgency ("someone else is asking").
What breaks it. Refusing the move — that's the entire defense. The fee
you'd save is the price of the only mechanism that can reverse the deal. A
seller with a real account loses nothing by staying on-platform; only the
scheme needs the exit.
The play. A "trusted middleman" — sometimes impersonating a real
community guarantor, complete with cloned profile — offers to hold the account
and the money. Both sides send; the middleman was the counterparty's alt all
along.
Red flags. The middleman is proposed by the other side and "verified" by
screenshots; the profile is days old or has a near-identical handle to a
known one; contact happens through DMs rather than the guarantor's public
channel.
What breaks it. Structural escrow instead of personal trust. A
marketplace escrow is not a person who can be impersonated — it's the
platform holding funds. If a deal genuinely needs a human guarantor, the real
ones list their exact handles publicly and confirm through their public
channel, never through a DM started by someone else.
The play. The buyer pays, receives the account, then disputes the charge
with their bank or PayPal: "digital goods not received". Card networks lean
toward cardholders on digital goods; the seller loses the account and the
money.
Red flags. Buyer pushes for a payment rail with easy consumer disputes;
refuses platform checkout; wants delivery before payment settles.
What breaks it. Delivery evidence and rails that respect it — and a
marketplace that eats the dispute process instead of the seller. Our answer
is the escrow + hold
structure: the
platform is the merchant of record, the dispute lands on us, and delivery is
logged (credentials handed over, timestamps, confirmation click) so the
"never received" story has to argue with a record.
The play. The listing's screenshots are edited, borrowed from another
account, or show items that left the account before sale. You buy a locker
that doesn't exist.
Red flags. Screenshots instead of named items; watermarks cropped;
refusal to show a fresh screenshot with a piece of paper / your nickname;
"rare OG skins" with no item names — an
unnamed rarity claim is the absence of a claim.
What breaks it. Structured listings. A card that names every notable item
is a set of falsifiable claims — and on delivery you check the account
against the list before
confirming. That check is the whole reason confirmation-gated escrow works.
The play. Before or after the deal, a message arrives: the marketplace /
publisher / payment provider "needs to verify the account" — a login page
that harvests exactly what the deal is about. Variant for sellers: a fake
"buyer protection" form asking for the account credentials "to hold in
escrow".
Red flags. Any request for credentials outside the platform's own
delivery flow. Links that almost match the real domain. Urgency plus threat
("deal cancelled in 30 minutes").
What breaks it. One rule: credentials move exactly once, through the
platform's delivery mechanism, at delivery time. No marketplace verifies
accounts by asking for logins in chat — a message that does is the scheme,
every time.
The play. A site that looks like a known marketplace — same layout,
similar domain, sometimes paid ads above the real result. Payment goes
through; the "order" never ships; support doesn't exist.
Red flags. Domain doesn't match the name you know; prices uniformly ~30%
under everyone; checkout jumps to an unrelated payment page; no company
details anywhere (comparison of real
marketplaces — every
legitimate one shows an operating entity).
What breaks it. Typing the domain yourself, checking the entity in the
footer against the payment descriptor, and paying with rails that can
dispute. Bookmarks beat search ads.
The play. Accounts obtained with stolen payment methods or credited
through carding get sold cheap and fast — before the publisher claws them
back. The buyer's account dies in the next ban wave through no action of
their own. Not always a deliberate scam by the listing seller; always the
buyer's loss.
Red flags. Freshly created accounts with high-value currency balances at
throwaway prices; sellers with high volume and no history; "bought V-Bucks
included" at prices that don't survive arithmetic.
What breaks it. Sourcing and accountability. Why bought accounts get
banned walks the ban reasons; the
short version is that the account's history travels with it. A marketplace
that pays sellers only after confirmation — and can claw back within the hold
window — makes dump-and-run sourcing unprofitable on it.
Before paying anywhere (including here): name the scheme a suspicious detail
belongs to. If it maps to #1–#8, you know the exact counter. If a deal
structure makes any of the eight counters impossible — no escrow, no
confirmation gate, credentials outside delivery, an unverifiable middleman —
the structure is the warning, whatever the listing says.
The safety hub collects the deep dives this catalog links to, and
the publisher-by-publisher enforcement table lives there too.
