SHE led a guy on, then stole from him, leaving him virtually penniless.

Cleaned out of his virtual wealth, that is.

Cybergame thieves were in the news recently, when one was fined $3,000.

Jenny (not her real name) claims she did it only once, a couple of years ago.

She duped an American boy she met in an online game and managed to get him to reveal his password to her.

She said she told him: 'If you love me, give me your password to prove it.'

Once she had the password to his account, she went in and plundered everything that he had painstakingly acquired after countless hours of playing the massively multiplayer online game (MMOG).

She transferred all the boy's virtual money, armour and weapons to her own MMOG account.

Jenny, barely 16, told The New Paper: 'I remember he had a few million in virtual money and I stripped him clean of his armour and gear.

'I think they were probably worth a few hundred dollars in our currency.'

Unlike Joshua Chua Er Jin, the game enthusiast who was taken to court and fined on 23 Nov, Jenny got away because her victim, who was overseas, never lodged any complaint here.

Joshua pleaded guilty to a charge under the Computer Misuse Act, in the first ever cyber-gaming theft case heard here.

The 20-year-old national serviceman had sold his MMOG game account to another game enthusiast for $1,000 last year, but he later managed to retrieve the account, changed the password and tried to peddle it again.

Jenny claimed that she had not thought that what she did was a crime.

'When he discovered his loss, he begged me to return it to him, but I didn't,' she said.

'I didn't think of it as a crime then. It was a game to me. With his virtual property added to mine, my avatar became more powerful.'

UNREPORTED CASES

Gaming companies told The New Paper that such cases are not uncommon, and that many are not reported to the authorities.

Regional games publisher and distributor AsiaSoft Online has encountered almost 200 incidents of players becoming the victims of hacking or fraud since it launched MapleSEA about three years ago.

MapleSEA is one of the most popular multiplayer online games here.

Serving more than two million registered players, AsiaSoft operates a first-of-its-kind customer service centre where players can walk in to air their problems and seek resolution.

Said Mr Ivan Seah, AsiaSoft's director of marketing and communications: 'There have even been incidents where a police report was filed.

'In such situations, AsiaSoft cooperated (with the police) by providing access to log files as all transactions are captured in our audit system.'

Mr Seah said typical complaints include loss of items and gamers' accounts.

These are most often attributed to poor account management, where account access information was shared or compromised, Mr Seah explained.

Sometimes when players installed third-party software to aid in their game plays, they might have accidentally released their passwords or had their accounts hacked into.

An avid gamer, who wanted to be known only as Ms Wang, encountered just that when she downloaded some software that was supposed to aid in her game play.

Her account was hacked the following day.

She lost about 4,000 'gold' pieces and her avatar was stripped clean of her armour and gear.

TEARS

Ms Wang, 32, who works in the creative industry, recalled: 'I cried and couldn't sleep for two nights.

'It feels like my real bank account has been hacked.

'The 4,000 virtual gold was my two years' savings.'

Ms Wang lodged a complaint with World of Warcraft's game master.

Five days later, she was returned about half her armour and gear.

'But they did not return me my (virtual) money,' Ms Wang said.

'Three other teammates also had their accounts hacked into. And they got everything returned to them. I'm going to continue to write to the game master to return my money.

'I thought of boycotting the game, but I couldn't. I'm too addicted to it.'