Apparently and according to what has been reported, as of today the FBI would be investigating RANE Developments, a quite famous group of hackers that apparently would have been the author of a scam with which they would have managed steal several million dollars from Electronic Arts through the well-known soccer game FIFA. The team of hackers would consist of four members who will soon be tried in Texas (United States) for conspiracy to commit electronic fraud.
As told in Kotaku, the strategy that this group of hackers would be taking to achieve their purposes, was to carry out a attack directly on Electronic Arts servers to get virtual money from the popular soccer simulation. Once they obtained this virtual money, they sold it to black market dealers in Europe and China. Such is the magnitude of the theft that, according to estimates from the FBI, the group of hackers could have stolen between 15 and 18 million dollars.
A group of hackers could have stolen between 15 and 18 million dollars from Electronic Art through FIFA.
If you are not a FIFA player, tell you that these coins are used in the game to buy player packs, allowing users to improve the staff of their teams. This virtual money can be obtained in two different ways within the game, playing games and spending real money in the shopping section present in the video game. As you can imagine, this causes a large level gap between the teams of people who invest money and those who do not.
The job of these hackers is basically to have created a tool capable of sending false signals to Electronic Arts servers With which it has been possible to generate FIFA coins at a high speed without the need to spend hours at the controls of the console. These coins were later sold to third parties. This activity began sometime in 2013 and continued until September 2015, at which point the FBI intervened in the hacking group seizing several luxury cars and almost $ 3 million.
Further information: Kotaku