#1.The Ultimate Investment Scam (EVE)
Player "Cally" won at EVE Online despite it being a massively multiplayer game with no victory condition. Other players earn ISK (game currency) by mining, completing quests or killing each other. Cally, on the other hand, simply asked for it. And it worked, and there was nothing they could do about it. Because while the other losers went into the economy as honest workers, or corporations, he realized he could go in as a bank.
The novice mode for illegal profiteering.
He spent months running the "EVE Intergalactic Bank (EIB)." This offered loans for start-up EVE corporations and miners who wanted to buy tools, with interest rates and repayment plans and yes, we're still talking about a game people apparently play for fun.
Cally certainly had fun: He fulfilled the secret fantasy of every bank manager in history, when one day, he walked in and just took all the money. All the money was 790 billion ISK, about $170,000 in real dollars, which he used to become the greatest video game villain of all time. He spent a huge chunk of the money to buy a ridiculously powerful warship, another chunk posting a huge bounty on his own head, then sailed off into space just daring people to kill him.
The ultimate dickery? He posted a 15-minute video bragging about how he got away with it, mocking his loyal employees at EIB, enemies who failed to stop him and the suckers who basically paid for a second job -- essentially paying for the right to have their money stolen. Understand: Cally is now officially smarter than every Bond villain put together, because he found a way to give an expository monologue without getting killed.
