RMT Laundering in Markets?

[Pashen]

On the Market board sales history logs I occasionally see items for millions of gil, for something that rarely sells or is even priced above a few thousand. A specific example, without naming the item, is a purchase history showing one transaction for an item that rarely sells for more than 5,000 gil, having been purchased for over 33 million gil.

To me, that reeks of the possibility that RMT-related gil is being laundered. I've been reporting the most extreme instances showing millions of gil trading hands. It's so blatant that I'm not sure if there are legitimate reasons for seeing transactions of this type. Perhaps it's the only way to move gil between two toons on the same account? Since I only have one toon, I've never tried to use in-game mail for that purpose, and don't even know if it's possible to do so.

If there are legitimate reasons for this type of Market activity, I'll quit reporting it. After all, Square-Enix certainly has the tools to scan and detect that type of pricing disparity without having to rely on incidental player reports.

Continue reporting, or not? Thanks in advance!

[PorxiesRCute]

Perhaps it's the only way to move gil between two toons on the same account?

Yep. You can't send mail to your own alts.

[AnimaAnimus]

This is what we used to send large amounts of gil between our characters in FFXI, so I would assume it's the same here.

[PawPrince]

It might be RMT activity but it's probably not. Both RMTs and players do this sort of thing, it is just how people move large amounts of gil between alts or each other, nothing more, nothing less. The max trade amount is only 1m, which is frankly chump change these days, so even if you are moving the gil to another player/account, it might be too tedious, so the only thing you can really do is take the tax hit and use the board. You see people buying stuff off mannequins for 1 gil, that's the same sort of thing, they're just moving items from one toon to another on the same account so they can sell it on another world. Then periodically they'll come back and "buy" the gil they made on their alt back to their main. There is nothing particularly sus about it.

I'm curious what you mean by "launder" though. Really, think about it. If you felt you needed to "launder" gil for some reason, why would you do it in a way that leaves a public record on the board history with the names of your alts?

Regardless, I don't think it would be possible to actually launder gil. Assuming SE is even paying attention, it's not like they wouldn't be able to see where all this stuff is going, I'm sure it's all logged somewhere. After all, it's not like the RMT alt networks are difficult to sniff out, just look at their FC's on the lodestone. The players who spend any amount of time on the market board all know who the RMT crafters are on their world. If SE cares at all, then I'm sure they will know too.

[Stib]

Yep. You can't send mail to your own alts.

Yes you can if your friends

[LibitIncarne]

Yes you can if your friends

Which is impossible. You can't send a friend request to someone who isn't online.

[Arohk]

Yep. You can't send mail to your own alts.

only other option is to use an FC chest, that also saves you the market fee