Last month, I stole 4.5bn from a corp that I’d only been in for slightly over a month. I haven’t shared the story until now.





I first came into contact with this corp just after the Odyssey 1.0 release, I’d been flying a covops around Aridia on my alt, checking out the new exploration sites and trying to strike it rich before the exploration materials market crashed. It was in Kenahehab that I met another explorer also in a covops, and we elected to work together to make sure we grabbed all the cans. (The new exploration sites hadn’t been solved yet, so we didn’t know which cans to go for, or that there was even a difference.) After a number of successful sites we chose to go to null, hoping to come upon more lucrative loot.

We’d been at it for a couple hours when he invited me to apply to his corporation. It was fairly small, hovering around thirty members, and most were inactive, newbros, or alts. There were however a few older players (circa 2008) that knew their stuff and made corpchat bearable. I’ll never forget the first thing I said when I joined the corp: “Hey guys. I can’t wait to awox every single one of you!”

Over the next two weeks I did more nullsec exploration with my new buddy. I’d learned which cans were profitable and which weren’t, but he never had. I took a perverse joy in finishing a roam with a cargohold worth several magnitudes more than his, knowing he just thought I was just lucky. Through trial and error, we discovered that the safest way back to hisec was through a wormhole chain; there was a much lower chance of being ganked. Once a few other members of the corp learned about this method, their general interest in wormholes was piqued.

I let it be known that my main had half a year’s experience living in a wormhole (true) and could provide direction in setting up a POS as well as call in some old wormhole buddies to help us get settled. Those who were interested took to the idea with fervor, and within two weeks we had set up a tower in our new home, a C2 with a C2 and losec static. During the setup process I’d brought another one of my alts into the corp, a freighter pilot, to help move the POS, modules, and fuel to our hisec staging system. (Had a HS->C2->C2 chain through which we made trips in an Orca and Iteron V’s.) Once set up I elected to keep him in the corp, citing his mining skills as a reason to stay in the wormhole. I even halfheartedly mine a couple of the grav sites to prove I was earnest. It was really boring.

During the POS setup, I’d managed to accrue a series of roles on both characters, supposedly to help set up. (Not that I ever actually did anything.) These roles were: junior accountant, auditor, communications officer, diplomat, personnel officer, config starbase equipment, and starbase fuel manager. When I asked the CEO for the config starbase equipment role, he responded with: “Sure, do you want accountant too?” It’s important to note that I’d been in the corp for maybe a month at this point, and as a relatively unknown entity there’s no way I should have been given this much power.

As the days passed in the wormhole, I began to realize how pitifully undermanned the operation was. If I was lucky, I’d catch another corpmember logging on to update his skillqueue. This boredom is what sparked my decision to steal what I could from the corp and GTFO. The CEO had a lovely deadspace fit proteus I’d had my eyes on, but unfortunately he’d taken to logging out in it after another corpmember had borrowed it without permission. This left the Orca, which I couldn’t fly, and an assortment of ships and loot in the SMA, CHA, PHA. The CHA and PHA were going to be difficult. I didn’t have access to all of the hangars in the CHA, and of course there’s still no functionality for accessing another player’s division of the PHA, no matter what your roles. I could train my freighter alt to sit in the Orca within a week, but I’d need help blapping the hangars.

A week later, I was ready. Luckily enough, the same day Industrial Command Ships I completed, a roaming hisec appeared in the wormhole. This meant I didn’t have to drag everything through a C2 chain before bringing it to safety. Perfect. I called up two trusted friends and let them in on my plan, promising them a PLEX each for helping me out. After guiding them into the wormhole we formed a bucket brigade out to hisec, I’d ejected ships from the SMA as fast as they could board them. We made 1.5bn right then and there, get a few faction fit battleships, throw in a couple T2 cruisers, and that adds up fast. As we sent the last battleship through the wormhole collapsed behind it, forcing us to take the Orca through a chain once we loaded it with goodies. I scanned down a hisec exit, not one but two C2s down the chain. Not ideal, but manageable.

My initial plan was to take the POS tower and all of its modules with me, I had a great image in my head of the CEO logging back in to where he was sure he left a tower, only to find empty space. Alas, I wasn’t aware that an anchoring skill was needed to unanchor object’s so I couldn’t do that. However, I was able to offline the tower and pop the hangars. The CHA dropped a handful of faction and deadspace mods, and the PHA had a veritable mountain of sleeper loot, the crest lost in dense fullerene clouds. Another 2.5bn! I loaded it all into the Orca along with around 200mil’s worth of fuel from the tower, and we were feeling pretty good.

The three jumps to hisec made a harrowing journey. The Orca was the secondmost expensive ship I’d flown at the time, and in its cargohold I had more wealth than I’d made insofar in EVE. I’m happy to report there was nothing to worry about, the trip was made safely, and all the ill-gotten goods sent off to market.

A couple days later I logged in to see if anyone had discovered my treachery. The CEO was already online, just me and him in the corp channel. He wasn’t as angry as I’d imagined he would be. This instantly made me feel guilty. He said he understood that this was a game, and this was part of the game. I’d pulled one over on him. Good on me. I felt absolutely terrible. I wanted him to yell at me, I wanted him to hate what I’d done to him and his corporation. But he just said he understood. I couldn’t shake the sour taste in my mouth, so I checked my wallet balance. That cheered me right up.

I’d like to thank M and V for their help in the heist, and A for being such a great guy about getting dunked.